Apocalypse Pow! -- `Armageddon': When In Doubt, Blow Something Up

Movie review XX "Armageddon," with Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Steve Buscemi. Directed by Michael Bay, from a script by Jonathan Hensleigh and J.J. Abrams. 150 minutes. Auburn Cinema 17, Bella Bottega, Crossroads, East Valley 13, Everett Mall 1-3, Factoria, Gateway, Grand Cinemas, Issaquah 9, Kent 6, Kirkland Parkplace, Meridian 16, Mountlake 9, Neptune, Northgate, Puget Park drive-in, Southcenter, South Hill Mall, Woodinville 12. PG-13 - Parental guidance advised because of sci-fi disaster action, sensuality and brief language.

Poor New York. In "Deep Impact," which opened in theaters May 8, a tidal wave flattened the city's skyscrapers. In "Godzilla," which arrived just 11 days later, a giant lizard razed the high-rises.

In "Armageddon," which opens today, a meteor shower tears through the city, trashing Grand Central Station, decapitating skyscrapers, causing a series of fiery traffic jams and decimating a man wearing an "I Love New York" T-shirt.

But this is a Jerry Bruckheimer production, so the mayhem can't end there. The co-creator of "The Rock," "Top Gun" and "Con Air" never met an explosion he didn't like, so there's a new catastrophe every 20 minutes or so. It begins with a flashback to 65 million years ago, when an asteroid destroyed the dinosaurs.

"It happened before," says the narrator, Charlton Heston, at full biblical throttle. "It will happen again. It's just a question

of when."

The relatively small-scale "Deep Impact" threatened us with a comet the size of Manhattan. Bigger but no better, "Armageddon" gives us an asteroid the size of Texas. Hurtling toward Earth with its accompanying space garbage, the huge rock also makes enough noise to cause rock-concert deafness.

Supposedly no one can hear you scream in space. But what would a Bruckheimer action movie be without ear-splitting Dolby effects to accompany those explosions? The notion that an asteroid is essentially a silent killer (until it's too late) is sacrilege here, so there's no opportunity for the creepy, silent space deaths so effectively dramatized in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

In-between the explosions and the surround-sound rumblings, there's a kind of a story, although it's not enough to hold this 2 1/2-hour movie together. Five writers are listed in the on-screen writing credits, and even more (including Paul Attanasio and ubiquitous script doctor Robert Towne) are mentioned in the press kit.

Alas, the only memorable line is "Houston, you've got a problem," delivered by the hero, Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis), an astronaut who's feeling betrayed by Mission Control at a particularly tricky moment. The funniest bit: Stamper's crew demands that they'll never have to pay taxes again if they succeed in blowing up the asteroid.

Stamper is actually a deep-core oil driller who's been recruited by NASA's executive director (Billy Bob Thornton) to rendezvous with the big rock, drill a hole for a nuclear bomb and set it off, in hopes of preventing the pesky thing from colliding with Earth. He's accompanied by a cast of characters who might as well be called Handsome Surrogate Son (Ben Affleck), Comic Relief (Steve Buscemi), Estranged Father (Will Patton) and Military Nut (William Fichtner).

Inevitably, the Affleck character is sleeping with Stamper's daughter (Liv Tyler), so Stamper has to go through the motions of objecting to the liaison, compromising and learning to respect his future son-in-law. Other conflicts and characterizations are even sketchier; a blow-out night before the mission is so uninvolving that it stands out as naked narrative padding.

Directed by Michael Bay (also from "The Rock"), "Armageddon" is a confusingly edited and stubbornly stupid movie, yet in the end it shares the same problems as "Deep Impact," which tried to take a more thoughtful approach to the subject. Neither film can make its characters seem in any way genuine, even if their plight generates some sense of identification near the end of their trials.

The only compelling lure is the special effects, which are sometimes impressive, sometimes transparent, yet somehow always inadequate to the apocalyptic task at hand.