Armageddon

Rating: **/*****, or 4/10

Overly noisy and bombastic action spectacle featuring the imminent demise of our planet by a giant asteroid, so an unlikely group of oil drillers is send into space to drill a hole in this threat and plant a nuclear bomb into it so it can be blown up in space before it kills us all. Though the movie features a deliciously good cast and plenty of action, its at times completely asinine plot, cheesy jokes, focus on loud explosions and abundance of annoying moments of blatant American patriottism clearly betray this film to be yet another obnoxious Michael Bay product, dragging on for 150 minutes from one silly catastrophe to another until we simply cannot care about the characters' plight any more. Too bad, since the film starts out pretty good with a convincing and spectacular action scene of small meteorites hitting landmarks around the globe. After that, the movie only goes progressively downhill, despite the solid score and the many fine actors involved.

Starring: Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck, Steve Buscemi

Directed by Michael Bay

USA: Touchstone Pictures, 1998