Armageddon (1998) - Yeah, I know it's dumb, but...

I remember watching 'Armageddon' back in the cinema back in 1998 (and probably on VHS soon afterwards).  And I enjoyed it.  It was fun.  And that was about all I really had to say about it.  I don't know why after nearly thirty years I decided that I needed to watch it again, but - for some reason I can't explain - it hit me on so many different levels.

No, I'm not saying it's an intellectual film with deep themes and layers.  I still think it's dumb fun - an asteroid is hurtling towards Earth, destined to wipe us all out and NASA's best plan is to send a rag-tag group of oil drillers led by Bruce Willis to plant a bomb on it before it hits us.  Yeah, I know - don't think about anything 'physics-related' when you watch this or you'll turn it right off.

Somewhere along the timeline of movie-making, Hollywood seemed to have stopped caring about good old-fashioned harmless fun (no matter how daft the premise!) and gave us dreary, tired and depressing tales of miserable people.

Michael Bay gets a lot of flack these days (mainly for butchering 'Transformers' lore!), but sometimes we forget just how well he can elicit emotion through his direction.  Yes, 'Armageddon' is very 'American, hell yeah!' There are plenty of the tropes that define his film-making techniques, i.e. helicopters, the stars and stripes flag and those weird explosions that seem to have fireworks contained within them, but here it all adds to the ride he takes you on.

Sure, some of the characters are a bit one-dimensional, but that doesn't mean you won't care about them when the mission gets underway.  The first half of the film could almost be described as a 'comedy' but when the crew finally come to terms with the stakes, the atmosphere changes to more dramatic tension.

'Armageddon' is no masterpiece.  It'll never rank as highly as 'true classics' like 'The Godfather' and 'Empire Strikes Back,' but it is just about as perfect as a movie that has the sole purpose of entertaining you can be.  If all you're looking for is to shut your brain off and enjoy the ride, then this is the two hour spectacle for you (okay, there is a bit of over-acting here and there that made me roll my eyes back in 98 and hasn't aged that well, but, apart from that, the rest is sound!).

9/10 almost as perfect as The Godfather