Armageddon (1998)

The odd thing about rewatching Armageddon, a film I have watched a number of times before, is that it is somehow both worse and better than I remember. It's quite ridiculous, but manages to be ridiculous in many right ways to balance out the times that it's ridiculous in many wrong ways.

Most people know the story. There's a giant rock hurtling towards Earth. The only way to save our planet is to travel into space, land on the giant rock, and drill down into it to plant some major explosives. There's no way astronauts could manage that. The world needs the best drilling workers, and those drilling workers come in the shape of Harry S. Stamper (Bruce Willis) and co. There are some lame attempts to make things tense, there's plenty of heroism and "America: F**k Yeah!" throughout almost every main sequence, and you get to remember how much you love or hate Aerosmith singing "I Don't Want To Miss A Thing."

It might be Jonathan Hensleigh and J. J. Abrams credited in the writing department, with a bit of input from Tony Gilroy, Shane Salerno, and Robert Roy Pool, although I couldn't say how much any one person added into the mix. It's easy to see the overwhelming stamp of director Michael Bay all over it though. There's no subtlety, of course, and no desire to keep the action clear and watchable. In fact, I would argue that Armageddon is at its worst when viewers have to suffer through the poorly-shot and messily-edited action beats.

Willis may not be doing his best work, but he's fine in blockbuster star mode. Ben Affleck, playing the younger and more hot-headed "drill Jedi", who also happens to be in love with his boss's daughter, Grace (played by Liv Tyler), is also fine, although he has never been as comfortable in these kinds of films as he is in less mainstream fare. Tyler does what is asked of her, and is a welcome presence, despite being constantly pushed offscreen by the tide of testosterone. The supporting cast is pretty great though. Billy Bob Thornton does well, Will Patton and William Fichtner are both as dependable as ever, and there's a lot of fun to be had with any scene involving Steve Buscemi and/or Peter Stormare. You also get Owen Wilson, Keith David, Michael Clarke Duncan, Jason Isaacs, and very brief appearances from Eddie Griffin, Grace Zabriskie, Udo Kier, Shawnee Smith, and Matt Malloy.

There's plenty of impressive hardware on display, the bombastic score from Trevor Rabin ensures that nobody gets to forget the heroism and machismo of our main characters for even one minute, and John Schwartzman tries hard to impress with cinematography that is undermined by the horrible editing so familiar to anyone who has watched any other Michael Bay movie.

Armageddon is not good, but it's comfortingly ridiculous for a lot of the bloated 151-minute runtime. I would put almost every other Bay movie ahead of it, and there are a number of Bruckheimer-produced movies from this time period I would also put ahead of it, but I cannot deny that I can still happily sit down with it once every ten years or so, like treating myself to an unhealthy bit of fast food that makes me hate myself as soon as I've swallowed the last tasty morsel. 

7/10

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Ambulance (2022)

Based on an 80-minute movie from over 15 years ago, Ambulance is Michael Bay once again being as Michael Bay as possible. And if you remember one thing by the time the end credits have rolled it will be just how much Michael Bay likes to use drones now.

Yahya Abdul-Mateen II plays Will Sharp, a young military veteran who is struggling to get the money required to get his wife the surgery she needs. He decides to visit his brother, Danny (Jake Gyllenhaal), and ask him for a big favour. It turns out that his timing couldn't be better/worse, as Danny is planning a large bank robbery that day and wants a man on the team he can fully trust. Danny has robbed many banks, and he doesn't like to hurt or kill people. Will reluctantly accepts the offer to get in on what could be a massive payday. Things don't go to plan, which leads to Danny and Will fleeing the law in an ambulance that still has a paramedic, Cam (Eiza González), inside, treating a wounded police officer.

Where Ambulance works best is in the relationship between Danny and Will, who may not be brothers in the strictest sense (Will was taken in by Danny's family when he was very young), but show, at every opportunity, that they absolutely consider themselves real brothers. There's also an interesting dynamic between the two when it comes to planning their endgame, with Danny constantly figuring out odds and options while Will just does whatever he can to keep others safe.

Gyllenhaal and Abdul-Mateen II are both excellent in their roles. The former is a blend of charm and danger, the latter is a man who immediately regrets a mistake he made. Both feel like a good fit, and they have nice chemistry with one another. González does equally well, working out her own best way to survive the situation while trying to keep a patient alive. She quickly sizes up who is the better of the two men, and it’s nice to have a central female figure in this kind of movie that isn’t “potential love interest”. Garret Dillahunt is great fun as the main authority figure pursuing the fleeing robbers, Keir O’Donnell is also very good, an agent from a different bureau who has a history with one of the brothers, and Olivia Stambouliah delivers a constant line of dry humour as a tech whizz assisting the police operation.

It’s just a shame that this is ultimately hampered by Bay doing what he does. Some parts still work really well - the bank robbery itself is a great mix of escalating tension (in some ways) and violence, there are some shots that throw viewers into, and under, carnage in a way unlike any others I can think of - and there’s certainly a good sense of momentum once the leads end up in their getaway vehicle. Sadly, overediting spoils a number of stunts, the constant drone camerawork becomes tiresome, even when it is delivering some stunning shots, and, perhaps ironically, the film could stand to lose at least twenty minutes from the runtime (ironic because of the overediting negatively affecting other aspects of the movie). There are also one or two characters too many (the two worst of them being a criminal kingpin and a cop out for revenge) and a grand final plan that seems to make absolutely no sense at all. I am not sure how the original film plays out, and I am keen to see it one day, but writer Chris Fedak must take the blame for some of the mis-steps here, flaws that really weaken what should have been a strong third act.

Michael Bay has his fans, I am sometimes one of them, and this has enough onscreen that will generally keep them/me happy. It’s just a shame that the concept couldn’t have been placed in the hands of someone with a similar sense of scale and bombast who could also maintain a sense of fluidity throughout. This is a film designed to flow, a river that develops from a trickle of water and ends at a dangerous waterfall. Bay ensures that it is simply a series of ever-increasing puddles, satisfying to hop from one to the other, but without any real, natural, connections between them.

6/10

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The Rock (1996)

Despite being directed by Michael Bay, The Rock comes oh so close to being a perfect modern action movie. SO close. In fact, I'd go as far as saying that it's only a horribly-edited car chase sequence that drags it down. Everything else, from the predictable moments of cheese to the interplay between the leads, is absolutely spot on.

A group of soldiers, led by General Francis Hummel (Ed Harris), steal some very nasty chemical weapons and take over Alcatraz. They have a number of citizens held hostage and are threatening to send some guided missiles to give many of the people of San Francisco an instant death sentence. The people in charge need to send in some Navy SEALS, led by Commander Anderson (Michael Biehn), but that team needs to be accompanied by a chemical weapons expert, Stanley Goodspeed (Nicolas Cage), and John Mason (Sean Connery). Mason is the only person to have ever escaped from Alcatraz. In fact, he is pretty good at escape, which is why the main government representative is wary of getting him to help out. Mason was alleged to have stolen a microfilm just chock full of many dark and dirty secrets decades ago, and he's been held without trial ever since. Maybe revisiting Alcatraz will help him to become a free man once more.

You may not have thought so from the first sentence, but I tend to enjoy the movies of Michael Bay. They're absolutely fine when you're in the mood for some slick, bombastic, action. But they are rarely truly great. The Rock is truly great, and that is often despite the usual style of Bay being stamped all over it. It’s great because of the characters scattered throughout the groups of heroes and villains, and great because of a script, by David Weisner, Douglas Cook, and Mark Rosner, that makes things more morally shaded and complex than most of these action blockbusters. Ed Harris gets to play arguably the most interesting and ambiguous “villain” of the nineties, and he is just one essential part of the puzzle.

Cage is fun in his role, playing someone who steps up to do what needs done, despite being way out of his depth. Connery is perfect, an old survivor who has retained skills that make him a great ally or dangerous enemy. And Harris holds your attention completely every time he’s onscreen. The supporting cast also includes fantastic performances from John Spencer, William Forsythe, Michael Biehn, Tony Todd, David Morse, and many other familiar faces, all making the most of their screentime. Vanessa Marcil isn’t given much to do, she is “the girlfriend” who helps Cage to explain his personal investment in stopping those rockets being launched.

There’s a superb score, mainly from Hans Zimmer, some great fights that mix fun choreography and moments of brutality, and every interaction between Cage and Connery is gold. You cannot do much better than this if you want a fun action movie to fill a couple of hours during a Saturday evening. Almost an outright modern classic.

9/10

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Transformers: Age Of Extinction (2014)

Feel free to check out my overview of the other Transformers movies right here.

And so we get to the fourth live-action Transformers movie from director Michael Bay, and anyone believing that this outing will be oh-so-different from his previous outings may well find themselves angry at being suckered once again as the end credits roll. Of course, those knowing exactly what they're letting themselves in for should come out smiling. I'm not saying that anyone WILL believe that this robo-flick is going to be any different from the others. I'm just giving fair warning.

Set some years after the events of the last movie, both Autobots and Decepticons are being treated as hostile aliens by shady government types (namely Kelsey Grammer and his right hand man, played by Titus Welliver). They're also being researched by Stanley Tucci and his many workers, in an attempt to make the best use of that incredible technology, and to make lots of money. Meanwhile, Mark Wahlberg is an inventor who hasn't made any breakthrough in the years that he's spent chasing his dream, leaving him with a seriously unhealthy bank balance and a seriously exasperated daughter (Nicola Peltz). All that looks set to change when he finds a run-down truck that turns out to be Optimus Prime, bringing the potential for great reward, and also great danger.

Love or hate the guy, and so many fall into the latter camp, it's hard to think of anyone who does BIG action set-pieces as well as Michael Bay. Why choreograph a fight between some robots when you can choreograph it in mid-air while the robots are transforming to overcome obstacles? Why put your main characters in some mild peril when you can put them through some physics-defying trauma that works the stunt performers and FX team to way beyond normal? Bay always thinks big, which is why these movies work well, for most of the time.

I've enjoyed all of the Transformers films, to some degree, because they all supply what I want to see, when it comes to large robots battling one another and transforming in cool ways. Ehren Kruger, back on the script-writing duties here, doesn't fix a formula that ain't broke. The human characters are still pretty thin, although Grammer, Welliver and Tucci all fare much better than John Turturro did in the previous movies, and the focus is on the spectacular set-pieces, as it should be.

Wahlberg isn't too bad in the main role, it's just a shame that the inventor side of his character is overshadowed by the single dad side. He's over-protective of Peltz, and that becomes more noticeable when they're joined by her boyfriend (Jack Reynor). Oh, and Reynor is playing an Irish lad for no discernible reason that I can think of, apart from allowing Wahlberg to then call him "Lucky Charms" throughout the movie. Seriously, either allow the guy to use his own accent or get, hmmmm, an Irish actor. T.J. Miller is good fun in a small role, Binbing Li gets to kick some ass, and Sophia Myles is underused, but always worth having in any movie, in my opinion (dear Hollywood, put Sophia Myles in more movies).

Optimus Prime is meaner than he has been previously, with good reason, and he's joined by Bumblebee, Hound, Drift, Crosshairs and Brains in his latest battle with Galvatron (essentially Megatron in a different guise), all while avoiding the attention of a robo-bounty hunter named Lockdown. Yeah, most of these names mean very little to me either, but I thought I'd mention some of the main robo-characters for fans who know much more about this universe than I do. And there are dinobots. How could I almost forget to mention the glorious dinobots? They may not get too much time on screen, about 15 minutes at most, but they're pretty damn impressive when they appear.

There are moments in which things pitch over into the ridiculous, including a high-wire sequence that proves that Wahlberg may be the most well-balanced man on the planet, literally, but this is a movie that's never too far away from another fantastic bit of eye-candy or impressive stunt work, or both. It's a bit overlong, at over two and a half hours (the longest entry in the series), but it's almost perfectly paced, meaning that it doesn't overstay its welcome. Well, not by too much.

And there are dinobots.

7/10

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The Island (2005)

When The Island was released back in 2005 it quickly became the excuse that everyone needed to give director Michael Bay a bit of a kicking. It was a big-budget sci-fi action movie that didn't perform half as well as it was expected to, it pretty much led to (or certainly contributed to) the end of the Dreamworks SKG studio as it was established at that time and there were cries of plagiarism from anyone who had seen The Clonus Horror (a film that I've yet to see, but the fact that Robert S. Fiveson was able to bring a copyright infringement suit to court and have Dreamworks settle before the case could go to trial would seem to suggest that there was certainly a fair bit of common ground). There was also the strange idea to show a 45 minute preview of the movie at Cannes, which was almost like slapping numerous film critics in the face with a wet cod. The marketing maching rolled on and on and the movie went out into the wild with two good names in the leads and some interesting ideas but it was all far too late. Every interview seemed to become a minefield for anyone trying to avoid being quoted out of context and the knives were well and truly out.

I like The Island and I think it was unfairly treated when it first came out. In fact, I know a number of people who have since seen it on DVD or TV and grudgingly admitted that they thought it a damn sight better than a number of other Michael Bay movies that made lots more money.

The story is all about clones Lincoln Six Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two Delta (Scarlett Johansson). They don't realise that they're clones, nor do any of the other clones around them. Every day it's a similiar routine - wake up, eat whatever nutrients are recommended, dress from their unvarying wardrobe, work on a number of tasks and just wait until the lottery announcements are made. The lottery is the highlight for everyone, the winner gets to head off to The Island. But does the island even exist? Lincoln Six Echo starts to have serious doubts and when Jordan Two Delta actually wins the lottery there's no time to find out more so he takes her and they go on the run, opening up a whole can of worms in the process.

Mixing in action and thrills with some very interesting ethical food for thought, The Island perhaps tries a bit too hard to please the action fans while also pleasing those who like more thoughtful fare and maybe that's yet another reason why it didn't perform as well as expected. There are a number of potentially horrifying moments here and there throughout the movie but they lose their impact slightly by the time things move on to yet another typical upward-pointing 360 shot from Bay.

The script is pretty good, although a couple of characters could have been better developed (Michael Clarke Duncan should have bagged a bit more screentime and Djimon Honsou is let down by the writing in the final 20 minutes or so), and the direction is as you'd expect from Bay. I happen to think he's usually okay with anything that includes a bit of bang for your buck. Yes, he makes some bad choices like the harsh, harsh overediting of what should have been a fantastic car chase in The Rock, for example, but he can oversee some BIG set-pieces and put it all together in a glossy and entertaining package.

Last, but by no means least, we come to discuss the acting in The Island. This was also criticised by many people but I don't see anything wrong with it, really. Ewan McGregor, for most of the movie, has a strange American accent but who's to say that he was actually supposed to be getting it spot on anyway - he's a clone, actually only a few years old, and we don't know what influences he was exposed to in his formative period. Scarlett Johansson doesn't have any accent to put on but she does just as well as McGregor when it comes to playing up the innocence and vulnerability of their characters. Steve Buscemi is a delight for every minute of his limited screentime and Sean Bean oversees everything in a role that feels like a rerun of his role in Equilibrium. As already mentioned, Michael Clarke Duncan should have been in the movie more and Djimon Hounsou does well with what he's given. There's decent support from Kim Coates, Ethan Phillips and Brian Stepanek and Glenn Morshower also puts in a very brief, but very funny, appearance.

The Island is a very good slice of sci-fi action that I'd recommend to most people. There is, of course, a chance that you do end up disliking it and thinking that it deserved to perform as poorly at the box office as it did but I hope that's not the case. Mind you, if you absolutely loathe everything that Michael Bay does then this isn't going to win you over. If you can tolerate his style and are curious to see him do something that's a bit different from his normal output then you may just find this film as enjoyable as I do.

7/10

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