Action! Explosions! One-Liners! Liv Tyler!

Wildcat File Photo Arizona Summer Wildcat (From left) Steve Buscemi, Will Patton, Bruce Willis, Michael Duncan, Ben Affleck and Owen Wilson are off to save the world from "Armageddon."

Some time ago humanity defined a specific type of film that Hollywood produced. It was the "chick-flick," a movie that appealed almost solely to women.

Chick-flicks usually have some combination of the following: tragic loss, newfound love, one character with a life-threatening illness, several weepy scenes, etc.

So if that's a chick-flick, what defines a guy movie?

In my humble opinion, it's the following: action sequences that are almost like opera, explosions that make your teeth shatter, one-liners that no one in his right mind would say at the time they're said and one or more extremely attractive actresses gracing the screen.

Throw in the words "produced by Jerry Bruckheimer" and "directed by Michael Bay" and that about sums it all up.

By all accounts, then, "Armageddon" is a guy flick. Hell, it's the guy flick of the summer.

The plot is similar to "Deep Impact" in that a massive asteroid is on a collision course with Earth. The solution is to send up a team to drill inside it and drop a nuclear bomb into its core, splitting it in two so it will miss hitting our planet and blowing us all to smithereens.

But while "Deep Impact" focused on just about everyone on the planet in its ensemble cast, "Armageddon" focuses almost exclusively on the team sent up to blast the big bad rock into oblivion. Where "Deep Impact" was almost a chick-flick with action, "Armageddon" is a guy movie, through and through.

Bruce Willis, the actor who starred in what is perhaps the definitive guy movie, "Die Hard," here plays Harry Stamper, the world's foremost deep-core oil driller, who has to lead his team of character actor sidekicks up into space and deal with the Texas-sized monolith.

There has long been a debate about whether or not Willis can act. I thought he acted pretty well back in "Die Hard," but this movie should settle that debate once and for all. Willis may give the best acting performance of his career in this movie, or at least since "Twelve Monkeys" came out in 1996.

Having Willis in the film is part one of making this a definitive guy movie.

Part two is the fact that Bruckheimer ("Con Air," "The Rock") is the producer. All of his recent films have in common deafening soundtracks and explosions.

That holds true in "Armageddon," especially when the film's opening action sequence, a meteor shower that gives New York its umpteenth bashing of the summer, lights up the screen and annihilates a few eardrums in the audience.

Teaming with Bruckheimer again is director Bay, whose previous projects with Bruckheimer include the aforementioned "The Rock," and "Bad Boys," with Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

Bay's trademarks are a mix of eye-popping visual shots, slow-motion action scenes and, needless to say, loud explosions. Since half this movie is set on the surface of the asteroid, he has plenty of chances for all of the above.

Part three of making this a true guy movie are the immortal one-liner wisecracks, delivered here by a character-actor troupe composed of Steve Buscemi, Owen Wilson, Will Patton, Ken Campbell, Michael Clarke Duncan and Peter Stormare.

All of these guys, particularly during the scenes when they're being trained to go up into space, have one shining moment of truly wonderful sarcasm.

The best line of the movie goes to actor John Mahon, who plays an amateur astronomer who spots the asteroid first.

"I want to name her Dottie, after my wife," he said, and as his wife suddenly choked up at the notion, he added, "Because she's a cold, life-sucking bitch."

Part four of the guy movie quotient is the attractive female lead, here played by Liv Tyler, in what is by far her biggest movie to date. She handles the overwhelming testosterone of the movie with grace, which happens to be her character's name, and charm that makes every guy in the theater wish they could be Ben Affleck.

Even though "Armageddon" is clearly a guy movie, I do hope that the female half of the population doesn't skip it. After all, it does have a love story, tragic deaths and, um, other stuff of a potentially feminine appeal.

Hey, all the women at the sneak preview seemed to enjoy it.