A huge asteroid colliding with earth would cause a massive explosion equivalent to a million megatons of TNT, leaving a crater tens of miles wide. Sort of like what happens to your head after sitting through Armageddon.

As all the reviews have pointed out, this is one big, loud movie. But it’s also fast and furious. Many of those same reviews have compared the second “Meteor Coming Towards Earth Movie” of the summer to a two-hour Coming Attractions trailer. But I liken it more to a new form of filmmaking: the Movie as Montage. It’s Short Attention Span Cinema. There’s hardly anything in this film resembling a conventional “scene” with a beginning, middle and end. Mostly it’s just quick cutting from location to location with bits of dialogue here and there. When the film does remain rooted in one spot, there’s usually a rock song on the soundtrack to push things along at warp speed. (Speaking of the soundtrack, it’s virtually all Aerosmith, all the time -- appropriate enough since lead-singer Steven Tyler’s daughter, Liv, provides the film’s acting-impaired-yet-completely-adorable female lead.)

It's the end of the world, as Bruce knows it

Remarkably, the style works for the first act, which wastes no time getting the apocalyptic festivities underway, beginning with an awesome depiction of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs, complete with an assist from Charlton “You Maniacs, You Blew it Up” Heston, instantly lending the movie Sci-Fi cred. After quickly, jumping ahead 65 million years. We get a spectacular meteor shower that does more damage to Manhattan in two-minutes than Godzilla did in two hours (the sequence also provides a nice inside joke about that rival big-studio summer offering). Naturally, these meteors are just the opening act for the Mother of all Asteroids, a “Global Killer” the size of Texas. It’s just 18 days away, and wouldn’t you know, the only people who can stop it are a rag-tag bunch of roughneck open sea oil drillers, led by Bruce Willis. Their mission is as Willis’ character actually says at one point, to “kick some asteroid butt” by riding a pair of space shuttles to the rock, drilling a deep hole and detonating a nuclear bomb inside it. Simple enough.

The introduction of this bunch and their astronaut training are played for laughs. Where Deep Impact aimed to be a thoughtful film and failed, this movie only wants to entertain and it does just that. Bruce Willis acts like Bruce Willis, albeit with a redneck swagger substituting for his usual New Jersey swagger. And Ben Affleck’s goofy charm works better here in the action genre than in the indie film world. He comes off as sort of a Caucasian version of Will Smith. Steve Buscemi also hams it up as the genius of the gang. He’s happily aided in the comic relief by Fargo and Big Lebowski co-star Peter Stormare as a wacky Cosmonaut along for the ride after the aging Russian Space station blows-up (perhaps the only plausible moment in the film). The only one who bothers to really act is Billy Bob Thornton, who as a NASA chief gives the movie it’s most three-dimensional character just by showing up.

Things really get going after the crew heads into orbit. But the film’s crunching, pedal-to-the-metal pace never lets up. There’s one catastrophe after another to set the boys back and after a while, you’re numb to it all. You’re simply too exhausted by the last fifteen explosions to able to enjoy the next one. It’s all too much. There are also other meteor showers scattered through the film’s second hour, each wiping out a major world city (though it’s never explained how these meteors have such great aim).

Through it all though, director Michael Bay must be commended for his remarkable eye. Every shot is a Great Camera Angle and the glimpses we get of people around the planet awaiting doomsday offer the kinds of moments that were lacking in that other end-of-the-world movie this summer.

Armageddon is a lot of sound and fury, signifying nothing, but it does have to be seen to be believed.

Copyright 1998