DEEP IMPACT
(Sniff sniff) - I'm such a big softie.
One scene which probably would have been in this movie if it had been a Bruckheimer/Bay thing - as the comet is streaking towards the atmosphere, one lone astronaut, left behind on the surface, screams "Aaaaaaaaaaahhhhhh......" (or, a lone boater looks up at the sky, at the big piece of space-crap hurtling toward him, and glumly raises an umbrella) Or when the tidal waves rush inland to the hills, people barely get away at the summit, but the water reaches their ankles. Some guy sobs "Man, those were new shoes..."
Yeah, if I wrote this movie, it would've been pretty weak, wouldn't it?
Anyway, I really liked this movie. It's by no means perfect, and I'll get to the problems in a moment. But I'm pleased that somebody made an end-of-the-world story and made some effort to look at how people might handle knowledge of it, instead of just blowing it up. People acted stupidly, people acted intelligently, bravely, cowardly-ly. In other words, like people! Sure, this was done better in Last Night, my second-favorite movie of 1998, but Last Night didn't have the "Cooool!" factor of seeing the east coast get soaked.
In an unlikely series of contrivances, a comet is discovered by some amateur astronomers, but nobody in the public hears about it for another year or so. But the U.S. government knows, and they know where it's going. (hint: it ain't Venus) So they've covertly been spending a shitload of money to fund two projects - one is a series of underground caves to shelter a very small fraction of the population for a while if that thing whacks into us, and one is a space vessel named the Messiah. The Messiah's goal: to land on the comet, drill a big hole, plant a nuke, and blow that big bastard into bits.
I appreciated, believe it or not, the emphasis on tear-jerking over thriller/action content. I never thought I'd ever say that. I guess it's kind of refreshing, considering the kind of movies I generally see. The President (Morgan Freeman), the starship captain (Robert Duvall) and the teenager faced with choosing between his girlfriend and his parents (Elijah Wood) are the only characters who really get significant attention here, but that alone puts it way beyond other movies like Armageddon.
Performances and writing are both quite good, for the most part. Freeman and Duvall may well have been slumming and picking up their checks, but they do great work with what they're given. Wood was considerably less irritating than I thought he'd be. The science, while not perfect, is far better than what we usually get in this kind of movie. I mean, the guys writing this, at least, actually know what a comet is.
And at the risk of very minor spoilage, the mention of Western Canada caused the rest of the audience I saw this with to let loose with a unanimous "Aw, man..." And I mean in a good way.
It ain't without problems, and some of them are fairly serious. The biggest hurdle this movie faces is that it casts its net far too wide. It would have made a really awesome 3-hour feature, if done right, but there are so many damn characters that it becomes difficult to care about any individuals in the less-than-2-hours running length. In an age where the running length for this kind of movie is getting longer and longer, you'd think that the comparatively brief length of Deep Impact would be welcome, but this is one of the movies that needs to be fleshed out instead of trimmed.
The scenes with Maximillian Schell were completely unneccessary, although I think it was made all worthwhile with that one line on the beach. What a great line. For that matter, I could have done without Tea Leoni altogether. For some reason, about four years ago, our local newspapers just went ga-ga over her in a way I didn't see any national or American publications do. I still don't know why. And could they possibly have fit in more plugs for MSNBC?
That "horizon approaching" light didn't really make sense - it's not the horizon, it's the terminator. However, I can imagine the audience response if the light said "Terminator Approaching"
Still, very much a recommended movie. It's got a little something for everyone, you might say. Yeah, I know that usually adds up to suck, but it's not like it's Armageddon or anything, right? It's sweet, tense, and you get to see the east coast get blasted off the face of the earth like a pubic hair on a toilet seat. Hey, it's the perfect date movie.