Deep Impact Review
by Bill Chambers (wchamber AT netcom DOT ca)June 4th, 1998
DEEP IMPACT **1/2 (out of four)
-a review by Bill Chambers ([email protected])
(More gruel?
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7504
That's Film FREAK Central)
Starring Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood Written by Bruce Joel Rubin and Michael Tolkin
Directed by Mimi Leder
I thought the "competing projects" trend had reached its zenith in 1992 when two overwrought Christopher Columbus movies reached the screens. The fact that both of them died quickly at the box office didn’t deter the studios from financing separate films about volcanoes and track-star Prefontaine. Now, Deep Impact is the first asteroid picture out of the gate - July brings us Armageddon - and it’s certainly no embarrassment to the ‘end of the world’
genre.
Freeman is the President of the United States, bearer of bad news: a comet the size of Mt. Everest is careening towards Earth, and unless a team of astronauts can throw it off course, the world as we know it will end. In three separate stories, we see how this information ‘deeply impacts’ U.S. citizens. Leoni is an MSNBC reporter who first cracks the story and hopes that her divorced parents will reunite before certain doom. Duvall is a veteran astronaut who accompanies green pilots on the impossible mission. (These are the best scenes in the film, but the idea that these young astronauts shun, rather than look up to, Duvall is questionable—false conflict.) And Wood is a teenage astronomer whom, essentially, discovered the deadly rock and has it named after him; he wants to use his fame to bring his girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski, a dead ringer for Helen Hunt) and her family underground with him, where 800 000 people have been randomly selected to live during and after the possible devastation.
After the boring The Peacemaker, Leder’s debut, I was not looking forward to Deep Impact, but she brings an energy to the proceedings here that she previously employed on the adrenalized series "E.R." She handles the material with sensitivity, though she skimps on how the public copes during the year leading up to destruction. As well, by following three stories focusing on less-than-average people (a reporter, an astronaut, and a famed-astronomer), a perspective is skewed—these are characters with a constant inside track to scientific progress, also presumably more rational than typical John Doe. I also didn’t buy Wood and Sobieski—they seemed more like brother-and-sister than high-schoolers in crush.
Yet the gripping moments in Deep Impact almost compensate for its flaws. I really enjoyed the landing-on-the-comet sequence—Armageddon will have its work cut out. Freeman and Duvall are outstanding, as is Vanessa Redgrave as Leoni’s mother. In addition, whenever the film slowed down—a scene in which Duvall reads "Moby Dick" to fellow teammate Ron Eldard is downright leisurely—it hints at a bigger, meatier movie that might be on the cutting room floor. One thing’s for sure: the climax will have a deep impact on anyone who envisions environmental eradication when Freeman makes his first speech—nightmarish in spectacle, it’s possibly worse, and more terrifyingly beautiful, than you could ever imagine.
-Bill Chambers; May, 1998; originally printed in "The NewS"
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.
