The Ledge

Starring: Charlie Hunnam, Terrence Howard, Liv Tyler, Christopher Gorham, Patrick Wilson

Director: Matthew Chapman

Genre: Drama, Thriller

Rating: C

Athiest Gavin Nichols (Hunnam) is about to commit suicide by jumping off a ledge.  Detective Hollis Lucetti (Howard), who is having a particularly bad day to begin with, is responsible for negotiating with Gavin and attempting to get him to come down.  Over the course of the film the story goes back and forth between the present and the past, following the events that lead to these two men being there - for Hollis, it's what happened after he discovered that he's sterile and his kids aren't his kids, and for Gavin it's the development of a relationship with his neighbour, Shana (Tyler), who is married to the Christian fundamentalist Joe (Wilson).

Okay, so to start, I loved the ending of this film.  It wasn't what I expected at all, and I love how they decided to just go with it.  I really liked it.

The ending was probably the only thing that I liked about the film, though.  I found the characters portrayed by both Hunnam and Wilson to be unlikable - I thought that both of them were trying to go to great lengths to offend the other, which in turn just offended me.  It bothered me that the whole thing was based on the idea that the two of them were going to be trying to force their religious beliefs (or lack-thereof) on the other, and then that Hunnam's character decided to sleep with Shana in an attempt to get back at Wilson's character for being religious.  In the end, I think I really understood Wilson's character's motivation the most.  Even though I didn't support him, or even like him, at all, I could at least see his reasoning.

As for Terrence Howard's character... I really didn't see how his back story was relevant to the rest of the film.  It was unnecessary and kind of stupid.  That being said, I did really like the way that they handled the actual negotiation.  I liked the relationship that was built between Howard and Hunnam.  Asides from the conclusion, that was possibly the best part of the film.  There was this potential here, and they just kind of wasted it.

Armageddon (1998)

Starring: Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler, Ben Affleck, Will Patton, Keith David, Steve Buscemi

Director: Michael Bay

Genre: Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi

Rating: C+

This is not a good movie - few Michael Bay films really are.  It's lame and cheesy and ridiculous and I absolutely love it.  Unlike the similarly themed Deep Impact, Armageddon is pretty much entirely about the attempt to save the planet and not really at all about the people left behind, facing the end of the Earth.  Sure there are some brief moments showing the latter half, but they're not what's important.  That's typical of a Michael Bay film though; they're not about the little people, they're about the great men doing great things and the women who love them.

Armageddon opens with the discovery of an asteroid the size of Texas that is going to hit the planet and wipe out all life on it - even bacteria - in less than a month.  NASA scientists, lead by Dan Truman (Thorton) try to devise a way to save the planet, the best plan of which involves sending a group of astronauts up to it, drill a big hole into the asteroid (named Dottie), drop a nuke into it, resulting in an explosion that will divide the asteroid into two halves - if done before passing the magic line, Dottie will fly past Earth, but if done too late then both halves will still collide.  In order to do this, NASA needs drillers, specifically Harry Stamper (Willis) and his crew, considered to be the best deep-sea drillers on the planet.  This group of ragtag drillers are sent into space with NASA's best, all hoping to blow up the asteroid before its too late.  Oh, and there's a love story - Harry's daughter, Grace (Tyler), is in love with reckless driller A.J. Frost (Affleck), a fact that Harry is not happy about.

Where to start... So, it being a Michael Bay film, the science isn't exactly... well, science-y.  Bay depends on one-liners, flashiness, and things going boom, not intelligence.  There are no real good moments of solitude and reflection, something is happening every moment of the film.  When the people on the earth are reflecting about the impending doom it's always in this moment of passion and anger, there's no calms or moments of sorrow.  When things go wrong its huge and disastrous - such as the explosion of the Russian space station.  A lot of this creates confusion, it's hard to tell just what it is that's going on at points in the movie.  It's also rather messed up that Armageddon doesn't do anything to show any contingency plans and what not - in Deep Impact there's the Noah's Ark style backup plan, but there's nothing of the sort mentioned in Armageddon.

Actually, I do want to take back part of an earlier statement.  This film does take little people and makes them into great people.  In the end it's really the same result, but it's not entirely the same intent.  There are some great moments of Liv Tyler's that are really moving, as well as a few with the crew themselves.  For the most part though, it's all just silliness.  Armageddon doesn't really address the issue of the impending doom so much as the issue of how to stop it.  No one's caring about what happens after the team fails, just about ensuring that the team doesn't fail.  As such there's this huge gap to the film, this thing that's missing.  Despite that, though, I still love it.  Its an old favourite and I suspect it always will be for me.  Definitely not the best action film out there, or the best Armageddon movie, but still a good one.