Deep Impact Review
by Michael Redman (redman AT bvoice DOT com)June 4th, 1998
Attempting depth, but little impact
Deep Impact
A Film Review By Michael Redman
Copyright 1998 By Michael Redman
**1/2 (out of ****)
The night skies have always held a fascination for mankind. One of the ultimate unknowns, that's where gods lived and where we look to for signs as to how to proceed with life. Various heavenly bodies and their configurations signify favorable or adverse conditions. Comets were often thought to be ill omens.
In the first of this summer's destruction-from-above films ("Armageddon" with Bruce Willis opens later) one particular comet indicates the most sinister omen you could imagine. It's about to strike the Earth and wipe out all life on the planet.
High school student Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) is peering through his telescope one night at an amateur astronomy outing and finds a glow in the sky where there wasn't one before. When a professional examines the information, he discovers the bad news — just before he has his own fatal impact with an 18-wheeler.
A year later television news reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) is hot on a story about a White House sex scandal concerning a woman named Ellie. Through a web-search and dumb luck, she discovers that the actual word is "ELE", Extinction-Level Event. Abducted by G-Men for a secret meeting with President Beck (Morgan Freeman), she does an amusing word-dance attempting to find out what is going on without revealing that she knows little.
Beck believes that she is about to break the story and is forced to go public with the upcoming disaster. But not to worry, he explains, everything is well in hand. A team of astronauts is about to take off in the "Messiah", the largest spaceship ever built, to nuke the Mt. Everest-sized comet and save the world.
Veteran astronaut Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall) is the odd man out on the team. The rest believe that the oldster is only included on the trip for the PR factor. He thinks that the only experience they've had is on flight simulator video games.
Several months later, the Messiah reaches the comet to blow it to pieces. Since this is only half way through the movie, no one in the audience has any expectations that this plan will succeed. If it did, this would be one of the shortest disaster films in history and we wouldn't be able to see the huge tidal wave wipe out New York as shown in the previews.
Back on the home planet, the President tells the nation that there's been a glitch, but we have back-up plans. And if all else fails, we're constructing a huge "Ark" cave where a million people along with animals and plants will wait out the two years of darkened skies after the comet's collision. Our way of life will survive. Meanwhile, everyone should just go about their normal lives.
The film follows three groups of people: the astronauts, Lerner and Biederman. The reporter is coming to grips with her personal anguish. Her parents (Vanessa Redgrave and Maximilian Schell) have just divorced and her father has married a woman half his age. Young Leo is smitten with a classmate and wants to get her to the cave where she will survive.
Falling into the "Towering Inferno" syndrome, this movie attempts too much in too short a time. None of the characters are fleshed out and it's a real struggle to care about whether they live or die. All the cinematic short-cuts of manipulative teary-eyed good-byes in the world can't make us involved if we don't know the people.
What could have been fascinating sub-plots are left uninvestigated. Tanner's conflict with his fellow astronauts disappears into nothingness. A million people living in the Ark and how they deal with that situation begs for more screen time, but we never even see the inside of the caves.
This is one of the few instances where television would be the superior medium for a special effects film. There's too much to tell. It's tailor-made for a multi-hour mini-series.
Oddly enough, we never see most of the action. Most of the big outer space excitement is missing. As we watch Lerner's broadcast, the signal is disrupted and all we get is a computer simulation. When Titan missiles are launched towards the comet, we learn of the result from the President's speech rather than seeing it. The punchlines are gone. For a $75 million film, it seems _small_.
Admittedly there are a few impressive effects scenes. The astronauts on the surface of the comet is the high point of the action-oriented events. The huge tsunami wiping out the east coast isn't bad.
The acting is adequate, but with a cast of A-list actors, you would expect more. Far too many people are under-used and you are left wondering who they are.
The film missed the big story. How would most people react if they knew they were about to die? Beck tells them that they should continue as usual, paying their bills and going to work. I don't know about you, but if I know that life is coming to an end in a few months, those credit card bills are going to have to wait.
You'd expect that such an announcement would provoke mass hysteria, but there's very little of it in the film. In the real world, emotions would be running high. Some people would choose to party the last days away, others would be rioting in the streets and still others would be making peace with their lives. There's a song out now about the day they cured AIDS and the writer sleeps with half a dozen people on that day. With the end of the world in sight, you'd think that sex would be one thing on at least some people's minds. There's no sex, no mass destruction, no panic. Everyone in the movie takes the low-key moral high ground. Admirable but not realistic.
Director Mimi Leder ("The Peacemaker", "ER") has the right idea. People in the midst of disaster are more interesting than the disaster itself. "Titanic" proved that. But it doesn't work here. The cast is too big and the time too limited.
"Deep Impact" has its heart in the right place. There's just not enough of that heart.
(Michael Redman has been writing this column for over 23 years and if he hears of a comet heading towards his house, he's planning on partying like it's 1999. Email party invitations to [email protected].)
[This appeared in the 5/14/98 "Bloomington Voice", Bloomington, Indiana. Michael Redman can be contacted at [email protected]]
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