Bruckheimer can't live up to past in 'Armageddon'

It was logical to assume that there would be another Jerry Bruckheimer film out this summer. Last summer was "Con Air" and the summer before, "The Rock."

For this summer Bruckheimer has released the highly anticipated "Armageddon,"- "Deep Impact" only with a giant meteor instead of a comet.

Bruckheimer's recipe for success is simple. Take average people and place them in a harrowing situation in which they are asked to save the day. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the day is saved, and moviegoers are left feeling all warm and fuzzy inside.

There's absolutely no reason why Bruckheimer should fail. He pressed the right buttons to create success with "The Rock" and "Con Air."

Courtesy of Touchstone Pictures A group of roughneck oil drillers gets ready to destroy an asteroid the size of Texas that could wipe out civilization as we know it in "Armageddon."

"Armageddon" should be able to break even by this week, even after the disappointment of the other major $100 million movie of the summer, "Godzilla."

Here, at the very least, there are human heroes. Bruce Willis plays oil drilling genius Harry Stamper who, with his team, is hired by the United States government to save the world from a 22,000-ton asteroid the size of Texas that will obliterate the Earth in 18 days.

Fearing mass panic, NASA director Truman (Billy Bob Thornton) and the United States government deem the discovery of this asteroid top-secret.

REVIEW
	Armageddon 2 stars At Briarwood and Showcase

The big problem lies in the fact that in the first 10 minutes of the 2 1/2 hour movie, a huge meteor shower levels Manhattan. Ted Koppel must have slept through all of that.

Meanwhile, Willis and company are given two weeks of space training, and then they shuttle up to drill an 800-foot hole in the meteor and dump a nuclear bomb in it.

Willis' motley crew includes a degenerate dad (Will Patton), a strip joint regular (Steve Buscemi) and a protegé (an overrated Ben Affleck), who has the hots for Harry's daughter (Liv Tyler).

Tyler ends up spending a good portion of this movie in mission control, crying unmercifully at television monitors.

Buscemi's performance as the witty Rockhound manages to upstage all the high-profile actors, including Willis, who didn't have much to go on with a poor script that created cardboard cut-outs and inspired lifeless performances from quality actors and actresses.

Director Michael Bay has taken his previous experiences as a music video director and translated them into his movies. But his style isn't as effective as in his two previous films ("Bad Boys" and "The Rock").

Bay's 360-degree camera pans and choppy 30-second increment directing become tiresome in this film.

Courtesy of Touchstone Pictures Liv Tyler looks pretty cute in this picture. Unfortunately, looking cute and worrying about her brave, planet-saving boyfriend was about all she did in the summer disappointment "Armageddon."

The mark of a good director is the ability to take his or her trademarks and adapt them well to a given story. Such has been the way with many great directors, such as Steven Spielberg. Bay has a long way to go.

Once again, the driving soundtrack of Hans Zimmer along with Bruckheimer's choppy editing take center stage.

This is just another example of a movie with wonderful special effects, a huge budget ($140 million) and shallow depth.

Many of the characters in "Armageddon" cannot be sympathized with, as there is no emotion, the dialogue is extremely hokey and the scenarios become increasingly more implausible.

Whether it is terrorists holding hostages on Alcatraz or a hijacked cargo plane carrying lifers, Bruckheimer has proven that he is capable of creating good films.

"Top Gun" is a classic and "Dangerous Minds" was a good movie. But "Armageddon," unfortunately, just doesn't cut it. Don't worry about meteors, just save yourself from this incoming summer blockbuster failure.

07-06-98