A comet threatens Earth
and Morgan Freeman worries
he won't live to see Armageddon

Deep Impact
A Paramount/DreamWorks SKG Release, 1998
Directed by Mimi Leder

$$1/2

Deep Impact is a frustrating missed opportunity. This is the film that purports takes a sober, serious look at what would happen if a comet collided with earth. Its strongest attribute is its realism: the off-the shelf spacecraft design is very believable and everything unfolds for the most part in a very plausible way -- for the first half of the film things happen as you expect they really would, and that hooks you in. Then the wheels come off.

The pre-release hype sold this movie as a grim exploration of what would happen if the world got a death sentence. Well somebody forgot to tell the screenwriters because that notion is mostly ignored. Co-scripter Michael Tolkin, who gave us a different kind of end-of-the-world in The Rapture, doesn’t provide the same haunting sense of doom here.

When it's realized the apocalypse is upon us, plans are made to save one million people -- chosen by lottery. No one over 50 is eligible -- they all die. So, what kind of chaos would this bring about in the public at large? Would anybody over 50 bother to show up for work? Would anybody really accept the fact they were going to die? The answers aren't here in this film.

All we get our two parallel storylines: one, a Titanic-esque plot involving teenage astronomer Elijah Wood and his young highschool sweetheart -- their romance shattered by impending disaster. (Wood's character is even named Leo!) The other plot revolves around an MSNBC anchor who hates her father. Neither generate the least bit of interest. Never do we see the people partying as the end of the world approaches, the people praying, the people committing mass suicide, or the one dude who decides to surf the tidal wave caused by the comet's impact (you know somebody would try it). Nor do we get a hint of what it would mean to all these condemned millions when the inevitable happy-ending comes around (it's so obvious, you'll see it coming from across the solar system).

The third subplot is one of the movie’s few saving graces: the wonderful Robert Duvall as an aging John Glenn/Story Musgrave-type astronaut who’s assigned the task of landing a crew on the comet’s surface. TV-vets Ron Eldard and Blair Underwood and Private Parts’ Mary McCormack are also solid as other members of the “Messiah” team sent to nuke the comet. These scenes really intrigue. And Leder proves she can get our hearts pumping with a tense escape sequence requiring the astronauts to outrun the sun’s rays as they move across the comet’s surface. Morgan Freeman also stands-out as the U.S. President who’s real good in a crisis (you really trust the guy).

But the movie still falls way short. It tries to provoke thought and fails. That's a worse crime than a movie like Armageddon which doesn’t try to provoke any thought at all.

Copyright 1998