For love. For honour. For humankind.
From the blockbuster-making team who produced and directed The rock comes the biggest movies of the year - Armageddon! Starring the explosive talents of Bruce Willis, Academy award-winners Ben Affleck and Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Steve Buscemi and Will Patton, Armageddon is a meteor-storm of action adventure movie making that has you on the edge of your seat forgetting to breathe!
When NASA's executive director Dan Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) realises the Earth has 18 days before it's obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas, he has only one option - land a ragtag team of roughneck oil drillers on the asteroid and drop a nuclear warhead into its core. Spectacular special effects, laugh-out-loud humour, great characters, riveting storytelling and heartfelt emotion make Armageddon an exhilarating thrill ride you'll want to experience like there's no tomorrow.
Special Agent Matti
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Doesn't the Propaganda just tell you everything you need to know about this film? I first saw the film in glorious Widescreen Technicolour in an unredecorated 70s theatre in Amsterdam. The walls were three or four different colours, all of which clashed with the seats. There was a purple concrete pillar in the middle of the auditorium and an intermission when everything stopped, the lights came up and the audience filed out to buy ice creams. I remember intermissions from my distant, mis-spent youth, but then again, I also remember when people used to carry trays of ice creams and sweets into the theatre and sell them to you at your seat.
What was the point? Oh yes, this film is a cliché. Bruce plays a reluctant, maverick working class man who is drawn into big events in which he must be a hero. Ben is a young buck who is itching for his own territory. Liv is the maverick's strong willed, rebellious daughter. Ben is in love with Liv. The rag-tag gang is a rag-tag gang of minorities and deliberate contradictions (losers who are also geniuses, black men with big muscles, there's even a prostitute with a heart).
None of which has any bearing on the fact that there are lots of great effects, lots of action, lots of explosions, lots of people dying and lots of special moments during which it wouldn't be inappropriate to wave a flag and sing your favourite national anthem. Armageddon is a paean to all the Little American Battlers™ who are in desperate need of a life. If you don't have one (a life, not a Little American Battler™), then this is the flick for you.
You might also enjoy it if you just like seeing things get blown up.
M (Low level coarse language)
VHS retail: 3 November 1999
DVD retail: 7 November 2001
UMD retail: 22 February 2006
DVD retail: 2 August 2006
DVD retail: 13 September 2006 - Double pack
