Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #10719 in VHS
• Released on: 1999-09-20
• Rating: Suitable for 12 years and over
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, PAL
• Original language: English, Russian
• Number of tapes: 1
• Running time: 145 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
This 1998 testosterone-saturated blow-'em-up from producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Michael Bay (The Rock, Bad Boys) continued Hollywood's millennium-fuelled fascination with the destruction of our planet. There's no arguing that the successful duo understand what mainstream audiences want in their blockbuster movies--loads of loud, eye-popping special effects, rapid-fire pacing, and patriotic flag waving. Bay's protagonists--the eight crude, lewd, oversexed (but, of course, lovable) oil drillers summoned to save the world from a Texas-sized meteor hurling toward the earth--are not flawless heroes, but common men with whom all can relate. In this huge Western-in-space soap opera, they're American cowboys turned astronauts. Sci-fi buffs will appreciate Bay's fetishising of technology, even though it's apparent he doesn't understand it as anything more than flashing lights and shiny gadgets. Smartly, the duo also try to lure the art-house crowd, raiding the local indie acting stable to populate the film with guys like Steve Buscemi, Billy Bob Thornton, Owen Wilson, and Michael Duncan, all adding needed touches of humour and charisma.

When Bay applies his sledgehammer aesthetics to the action portions of the film, it's mindless fun; it's only when Armageddon tackles humanity that it becomes truly offensive. Not since Mississippi Burning have racial and cultural stereotypes been substituted for characters so blatantly--African Americans, Japanese, Chinese, Scottish, Samoans, Muslims, French ... if it's not white and American, Bay simplifies it. Or, make that white male America; the film features only three notable female characters--four if you count the meteor, who's constantly referred to as a "bitch that needs drillin'". Sadly, she's a hell of a lot more developed and unpredictable than all the other women characters combined. Sure, Bay's film creates some tension and contains some visceral moments, but if he can't create any redeemable characters outside of those in space, what's the point of saving the planet? --Dave McCoy

Synopsis
NASA's executive director discovers that the Earth has only eighteen days before it is obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas. He has only one option - to drop a handful of roughneck oil drillers onto the asteroid and get them to drop a nuclear warhead into its core...

From the Back Cover
From the blockbuster team that produced and directed The Rock comes the biggest movie of the year - Armageddon! Starring the explosive talents of Bruce Willis (Die Hard), Academy Award winner Ben Affelck (Good Will Hunting) and Billy Bob Thornton (Sling Blade), Liv Tyler (Plunkett and Macleane), Steve Buscemi (Con Air) and Will Patton (Inventing The Abbotts), Armageddon is a meteor storm of action-adventure moviemaking that has you on the edge of your seat forgetting to breath!

When NASA's executive director, Dan Truman (Thornton), realizes 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 it's core. Spectacular special effects, great characters and humour, riveting storytelling and heartfelt emotion make Armageddon an exhilarating thrill ride you'll want to experience like there's no tomorrow.

Customer Reviews

America saves the world...again
The story is improbable to say the least; an asteroid the size of Texas is going to hit the earth. Two space shuttles just happen to be ready to intercept and destroy it in a mere 18 days. The people who are chosen to blow up said asteroid are a motley crew of drillers. BUT...this is great fun. It's gung ho, fast paced, high action FUN. Harry Stamper (Bruce Willis) leads his crew of oil drillers on a mission to save the world. A less likely bunch of astronauts has yet to be seen...the gang includes Rockhound, a womaniser who likes his girls young (Steve Buscemi), Oscar, a brilliant but spaced out geologist (Owen Wilson), A.J. Frost, an irresponsible daredevil (Ben Affleck) alongside an alcoholic, a gambler and so on.
Liv Tyler plays Grace, the daughter or Harry who is driven to distraction by his immaturity and Billy Bob Thornton is Dan Truman, the mission leader at NASA who defends the decision to bring in the drillers as opposed to using Americas 'finest young astronauts'.
This film is pure entertainment and doesn't pretend to be anything other than that. What you see is what you get, a high octane, action filled, special effects packed, fun film. Don't look for any deep meanings, just enjoy.

Hollywood at its best/worst
Watched this on TV last night and feel compelled to write a review. I remember seeing this in the cinema as an impressionable teenager and thinking it was the greatest thing ever; explosions, tough nut men and funky gadgetry. Having watched it again now, I can't believe how different my opinion is.

This is the most blatant piece of American propaganda ever. A huge comet is ploughing towards Earth, and who notices it first? The Americans. Throughout the course of the film, you get the impression that the rest of the world is still living in a cave somewhere, scratching its collective head and banging a bone against a stone. Of course, only America knows that this threat is coming. Of course, only America has the technology to stop it. Of course, no other countries in the world have the slightest inkling that anything bad is happening, or come up with their own ways of stopping it, or even run away (non-specific Asian man sits eating noodles by a river, then BANG! Bye-bye non specific Asian city. Innocent looking French kids are playing around on a Citroen 2CV, probably having just finished their lunch of onions and frogs legs, when BANG! Paris gets wiped out. We then get a lovely sweeping shot of decimated Paris, because apparently the dust and debris from a comet impact settles immediately). The only other country that is credited as being capable of putting a man in space is Russia, but whilst Team America are whizzing around in their new, shiny shuttles (named "liberty" and "freedom", or some other patriotic nonsense) all Russia can muster is some drunken, insane Cosmonauts aboard their creaky, decrepit space station, which just so happens to explode as soon as America boards it. Goes to show just how much of the space race resentment is still held by America.

I won't even get started on the script; it's just dire beyond belief ("I've got just 5 words for you - Damn glad ta see ya boy!"). Some of the set pieces are well staged and look very pretty, but I can't stand films were half the characters are brought in just so they can be killed. By the time they've landed on the comet, I frankly couldn't keep up with who's dying and who's alive, and quickly got beyond the point of caring. One point of unintended humour was the fact that the guys at mission control got so distraught when one of the shuttles crashed, even though they pretty much knew this would happen anyway, that's why they sent two in the first place! ("At NASA, we don't take chances..."). And I've never seen such a drawn out ending, we knew from the start one of them was going to have to take one for the team, we don't need a seemingly endless scene where he looks all patriotic and nostalgic, just blow the damn bomb you fool!! And of course, the explosion works perfectly, and the world is saved. That is, one assumes, until the two massive chunks of comet get caught up in the nearest gravity field and flung straight back to Earth.

I know I shouldn't get so worked up, it's just a film, but it seriously worries me to think that America; a country that can't even deal with its own internal disasters (Katrina anyone?), portrays itself as the be all and end all solution to the worlds problems. Let's just hope that if a comet is about to hit, Bruce Willis and his cohort's real life counterparts are waiting in the wings to save us all. Not a one star film, because it does have a place, Im just not sure where that place is. Do yourself a favour, if you want an apocalyptic comet based film, go for Deep Impact.

What, another 'meteor' film? Oh, no, take cover!
I saw this on TV yesterday, having wanted to see it for a while. Bruce Willis does a very good 'fighting the odds' film, after all.
Thing is, this is not, in any way, comparable to 'Die Hard', which works for him with a very straight, simple - and plausable - plot.

'Armageddon' is the Gung-ho version of 'Deep Impact', but the plot is so farcical, with every possible twist wrung dry, that the only surprise in it is that Willis doesn't magically reappear from the debris of the asteriod at the end.

Others have worked the plot well already. Nothing more to add - though I wonder whether 'Team America - World Police' has a less daft plot overall than this one....