RodrigAndrisan

Being a filmmaker myself, not just a die-hard movie consumer, I know better than anyone that there is no such thing as a perfect film. There are exceptionally good films, true masterpieces, good films, less good films, bad films, very bad films and catastrophically bad films. I would not put this film in any of these categories because it has elements that place it in at least two of the categories, unfortunately not the masterpiece one. Let's call it an almost decent English film, with certain shortcomings. I love the British films of the '50s, '60s, '70s. In those decades, masterpieces were created with the best and most beloved actors and directors. I know them all and others like me know what I mean. Specific about this film: the script is the one with shortcomings, the actors are all very good, excellent I would say, the director Sidney Hayers did a very good job on an imperfect script, the cinematographer supported him with skill, the music is very good. The final product leaves much to be desired, to get something better the entire script should be rewritten, the potential is there. Sidney Hayers has much better films to his credit, I warmly recommend "The Firechasers" (1971), "The Southern Star" (1969) and the absolute masterpiece "The Trap" (1966), with the exceptional Oliver Reed and Rita Tushingham.

Although I would like to give stars to Eli Wallach, the best in the cast and a great actor in other films like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" (1966), "The Magnificent Seven" (1960) and others, Yul Brynner, also excellent in many other films, "The Magnificent Seven" (1960), "Morituri" (1965), ""Westworld" (1973) and many others, and Serge Gainsbourg for the extraordinary music he composed throughout his musical career, not for this film and not as an actor. The three of them were also the reason why I wanted to see the film, which turned out to be just a waste of an hour and 39 minutes, which is the length of the version I found on YouTube. Everything is lamentable in this production, the idea, the script, the direction, the acting. Why would the Russian army need horses in the war against Japan, which is an island, as the character Schloime Kradnik played by David Opatoshu also says? Most likely to eat them, not to ride them across the sea.

I don't usually write reviews for such films, my favorite films being the films of Federico Fellini, Sergio Leone, Marco Ferreri, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Luis Bunuel, Ingmar Bergman, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Pierre Melville, Jean-Luc Godard, Stanley Kubrick, and a few more like them. This "Armageddon" is a real "armageddon" from a cinematic point of view, a long waste of time of 2 hours and 31 minutes. I saw it for the first time in the cinema shortly after it was made and I had to watch it again on TV, having nothing better to do, being stuck in a hotel room in Porthmadog, Wales due to the continuous rain. All the actors give an awkward performance, the story is puerile, explosions after explosions, super annoying, the standard face of Bruce Willis in all the scenes, frame after frame, the same in all the films, playing himself, like many other "actors". I made a much better short film in 2013, also with an asteroid about to impact planet Earth, without explosions and without awkward scenes, one after another, "Solitary" is the title, only 5 minutes long, with believable characters and situations, like in real life, it can be seen on YouTube if you write the title, "Solitary" and my name, Rodrig Andrisan. Back to Michael Bay's "Armageddon", the only ones more natural and believable are Billy Bob Thornton and the actress who plays the woman who comes to ask for a divorce in her husband's astronomical observatory. The fact that the film was nominated for 4 Oscars shows, once again, how irrelevant the Oscars are. The film also won some awards and the well-deserved ones are those won at the Razzie Awards and The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, i.e. The "awards" for the worst film and the worst performances from all those involved.