USA 1997
Director: Michael Bay Actors: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi
An US space shuttle is doing a routine repair on a satellite in space. But suddenly the space shuttle is hit by a real "meteorite rain" and explodes. The horror at NASA's control center in Houston is even greater than you'll find that these meteorites are hurtling towards Earth. Within minutes, these boulders strike in, and cities like New York are like theatres of war. But that was only a little foretaste of what is yet to come. A huge meteorite, the size of Texas, is heading towards Earth. If he were to strike, this would mean the end of the world and thus the end of humanity. There is only 18 days left and NASA is feverishly looking for a way to prevent the disaster. If the meteorite fired nuclear missiles at him, it wouldn't have any effect. You only have one chance: An atomic bomb has to be detonated 250 meters deep inside the asteroid. Under the leadership of Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton), NASA is therefore looking for the world's best drilling specialist, who is also quickly found: Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis), the rough, uncouth boss of an oil drilling company, seems to be the only suitable man. He is also prepared to fly to the meteorite by means of a space shuttle and place the explosive charge there, but only with a team of his own choice. The men on this team are anything but NASA compliant, as they are either criminal, run-down or too fat for the astronaut job. However, since these people are the only chance to save the Earth, they are trained as astronauts in a kind of "crash course" in the remaining days. Two space shuttles bring the drilling specialists into space. But already when refuelling at the Russian space station, serious difficulties arise...
After reading through this, the content seems quite familiar? Right, if you know the Deep Impact story, you know Armageddon. It is even quite similar: the earth is threatened by a meteorite, one flies to the meteorite to attach atomic bombs, the crew (at Armageddon only one) saves the earth, in which it loses its own life. Did the storywriters write off each other? The story is similar to the story, but the implementation is so different. During Deep Impact the film more from the side of "How do people behave in mortal fear?"Armageddon's focus is clearly on action, which is more emotive in its emotional aspect. This becomes clear after the first few minutes. The action scenes at the beginning, when New York is struck by several meteorite chunks, are already far superior to those of the competition. The rapid start also gave me hope for the summer hit 1998. However, the film was unable to keep up the initial pace. The middle sequence in which the rescue team is trained to become astronauts has become a bit too long and out of place comedy is not exactly' 5-star-promoting'. The long closing part, which reminds of a science fiction movie rather than a catastrophic movie, is quite exciting, however,' action-wise' again 1A and blurs the aforementioned weaknesses. But what denies the movie besides the just mentioned middle part the fifth star, are the exaggerations. Even if you don't know much about "space travel" (as I do), you soon realize that many things are very unrealistic, sometimes even involuntarily? seems strange. Some logical errors also creep in. That simply didn't have to be! In the last five minutes the director also stuffed the film with patriotism and hero glorification (the space shuttle lands, everything cheers, at the same time 5 jets fly the "Lost Man"formation...), which doesn't bother any more. Of course, there is nothing special to be seen in an action movie like this. Bruce Willis plays normally solid, one (e. g. Steve Buscemi) a little better, the other a little worse. Liv Taylor basically only has a supporting role in which she can't necessarily show whether she is particularly good in acting.
In short: a very good film with first-class action, but one or the other gross insufficiency didn't deserve a full score. Unfortunately not the expected hit, but nevertheless worth seeing.
A movie review by Jörn
