Armageddon (1998)

Rating: 8/10 (6 March 2012)

Extremely underrated disaster flick, from the same year that Roland Emmerich's 'Godzilla' appeared, 'Armageddon' hits home on a more emotional level than most typical action adventures. The pacing is decent, the characters are all pretty well-developed, even though there is the occasional piece of dialog that was thrown in there to explain some things to the audience. I was thinking about apocalypse/end of the world movies, and I really can't think of too many great ones other than 'Night Of The Living Dead' which sits in an entirely different genre than 'Armageddon', and 'The Road' from 2009 which is also on a completely different scale. In the realm of action-adventure disaster films, 'Armageddon' sits near the top of the list. Maybe it's just me, but they really don't make 'em like this anymore. The characters are all just a little bit too developed, the story is a little bit too human. It tugs at your conscience, unites every person together in a sense that they are all in the struggle to fight against one common enemy, the asteroid. In a way, I am reminded of the awful TV movie 'Asteroid' starring Michael Biehn but that is again, in a pretty different realm. 'Armageddon' is serious work, our cast all play their roles nicely, Billy Bob Thornton of course got more star billing on this piece than he probably deserved, Eddie Griffin's minor role in the beginning is kind of annoying, Jason Isaacs is most convincing as one of NASA's lead scientists, Owen Wilson's role in here is something I had forgotten about also being that he pretty much quit the action scene and moved on to comedy in the years that followed. Professional Russian Peter Stormare is probably one of the film's most likable characters, but most impressive is really Bruce Willis, and that's the way it should be. He gets the audience on a more emotional level than he ever has probably, and still manages to keep that mean uncle sneer on his face the entire time, and doesn't mess around like he's making another 'The Fifth Element'.
All factual inaccuracies aside, like the notion of having fire in space, which we are treated to within the first two to three minutes of the film being the most obvious, 'Armageddon' stands strong as a criminally underrated disaster flick. Definitely well-worth your time compared to the trashy flicks that tried following in it's footsteps like '2012' or 'The Day After Tomorrow'.
'Armageddon' -----8/10. (Now I can't even capitalize 'Armageddon'? Wtf, Internet Movie Database?)