Deep Impact Review
by "David N. Butterworth" (dnb AT mail DOT med DOT upenn DOT edu)May 22nd, 1998
DEEP IMPACT
A film review by David N. Butterworth
Copyright 1998 David N. Butterworth
**1/2 (out of ****)
Blame it on sleep deprivation following the impromptu arrival of my third daughter, Lilla, but I actually enjoyed "Deep Impact."
For the most part.
Given the lack of depth or significance in the previews, Mimi ("The Peacemaker") Leder's film looked like it should have been called "Sub-Compact" rather than "Deep Impact." But as disaster movies go it's not bad, and not nearly as disastrous as the endless slew of end-of-the-world pictures that got rammed down our throats in the seventies.
Those productions, often directed by Irwin Allen, always featured an all-star cast (often with no-star acting abilities) and concerned some sizable global warning, usually drawing on various manifestations of those famed four elements--earth ("Earthquake"), fire ("The Towering Inferno"), water ("The Poseidon Adventure" and its sequel), and air ("Hurricane")--to dictate the utter futility of the situation. After all, you can't put up much of a fight against Ma nature.
Since the seventies exhausted just about every natural disaster there was, it's only recently that these kind of audience-grabbers have returned to the silver screen. In the last couple of years we've been subjected to threats by twisters, floods, and (twice already!) volcanoes. "Deep Impact," too, features a carefully selected all-star cast and, like 1979's "Meteor" (not to mention the upcoming "Armageddon"), a plot concerning a large chunk of rock hurtling towards Mother Earth.
The difference here is that the deep impact of the title has more to do with the deep psychological impact surrounding the imminent disaster than the crash 'n' burn spectacle of it all. That's a far cry from the embarrassing squabblings of those familiar faces in, say, Allen's "The Swarm," or any of the "Airport" movies.
Here, the ensemble cast including Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, James Cromwell, and Maximilian Schell all turn in decent performances in the face of likely annihilation.
Leoni is especially good as an ambitious newswoman whose investigation of a government scandal leads her to stumble over an even bigger Whitehouse secret: there's a comet bigger than a Buick heading for earth. NASA sends up a space crew lead by Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) to detonate some nuclear charges and throw the comet off course, but the implosions create *two* comets that are now heading for earth. Good going, Spurgeon!
Actually, this is a clever construct because it allows the visual effects wizards to show off their technical artistry when the smaller of the two comets hits. Not enough to create total mass destruction, but enough for us to witness a very impressive tidal wave taking out Manhattan.
"Deep Impact" gets a little preachy in the last twenty minutes, especially Morgan Freeman's closing presidential speech, and I lost count of how many times someone earnestly said "I love you" backed by a cherubic James Horner score that finally wears out its welcome. In addition, some of the logic leaves a lot to be desired (for example when Leoni encounters a monstrous traffic jam leaving the city she simply takes the hard shoulder, which appears not to have occurred to anyone else).
But I'd rather watch a film that places intelligent human dramas--how people really feel and react to life-threatening situations like this--above predictable "we're all doomed!" histrionics. And "Deep Impact" does that.
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David N. Butterworth
[email protected]
Originally posted in the rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup. Copyright belongs to original author unless otherwise stated. We take no responsibilities nor do we endorse the contents of this review.
