[VIDEO REVIEWS]Difficult to Keep This Director at Bay

Michael Bay is one of several directors taking part in the current craze for war movies. "Pearl Harbor," released last Saturday in Korea, has all the big explosions and gunfire exchanges that have become Bay's trademark. The director originally made a name for himself with hyper-action movies such as "Bad Boys," "The Rock" and "Armageddon."

BAD BOYS (1995)

Directed by Bay. Starring Will Smith, Martin Lawrence, Tea Leoni and Tcheky Karyo.

Producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Bay began their now famous producer/director duo with "Bad Boys." Bay's first blockbuster also paved the way for Smith and Lawrence to become movie stars. Smith and Lawrence shoot bullets and one liners in this action comedy.

Detectives Mike Lowrey (Smith), a swinging bachelor, and Marcus Burnett (Lawrence), who is happily married with children, have reputations for not playing by the rules. Mike's girlfriend is killed during a drug deal, and her friend Julie (Leoni) is the sole witness. In one memorable scene, Julie calls the police, requesting to talk to Mike (she will talk with no one else), who is out of the station house. Marcus takes the call, pretending to be Mike. The switch is full of humor as Marcus is forced to continue the deception to bring in Julie to protect her. To keep up the scheme to shield Julie from danger, Marcus moves into Mike's swank bachelor pad and Mike moves in with Marcus's family.

THE ROCK (1996)

Directed by Bay. Starring Nicolas Cage, Sean Connery and Ed Harris.

Bay and Bruckheimer followed "Bad Boys" with "The Rock," and reinvented Cage as an action star.

Disillusioned and psychologically unhinged, General Francis Hummel (Harris) and his group of mercenary veterans commandeer the island prison of Alcatraz in San Francisco Bay, taking 81 tourists hostage. Hummel demands that the American government publicly own up to the deaths of Special Forces operatives and pay a large ransom, or else he will launch 15 rockets containing lethal gas into San Francisco.

The government calls in Stanley Goodspeed (Cage) to team up with Patrick Mason (Connery), the only person who has ever escaped from The Rock. The two infiltrate Alcatraz backed by a team from the Navy special forces, SEALS.

ARMAGEDDON (1998)

Directed by Michael Bay. Starring Bruce Willis, Billy Bob Thornton, Liv Tyler and Ben Affleck.

In "Armageddon" the earth is about to be destroyed by an incoming asteroid the size of Texas. With 18 days until impact, NASA's executive director Dan Trumen (Thornton) hires Harry Stamper (Willis) and his crew of oil drillers for an outer space mission to blow up the asteroid using a nuclear bomb. The newly appointed astronauts, including the hotheaded A.J. (Affleck), go through intense training before leaving Earth on this "save-the-world" operation. Grace (Tyler) goes against the wishes of her father, Stamper, by dating A.J. She waits for both to return from a mission that, in keeping with space suspense, unfolds not exactly as planned.

by Joe Yong-hee