Deep Impact

Waiting for the sky to fall

Unsure of how successful the mission will be, the government has taken the precaution of digging gigantic bunkers which will house a selection of the U.S. population for up to two years, where they can sit out the aftermath of an impact. Just one problem - the bunkers can only hold one million people, so a lottery will be held to select 800,000 people to join 200,000 'essential' personnel (scientists, doctors, lobbyists, etc.).

While the round-up of the lucky lottery-winners take place, the president (Morgan Freeman) attempts to calm the nation, and NASA prepare a shuttle team to deliver the nuke onto the approaching comet. The shuttle team is led by veteran astronaut Spurgeon Tanner (Robert Duvall) who has experience of landing on the moon but is resented by his younger crew-members, presumably because he's old and therefore spoils the group photograph.
 
Anyone going to see this movie is expecting to see a disaster movie. Therefore, the initial suggestion that the reason for the  government cover-up is a sex-scandal is a little pointless (though a movie about a White House sex scandal entitled Deep Impact conjures up some interesting images!). In structure, this movie resembles one of those big-budget  1970s disaster movies, such as Earthquake, Towering Inferno and especially Meteor. Much of the movie is taken up with introducing a number of characters and their various problems, all of which become insignificant in the face of the impending doom. Unfortunately, a lot of what we see isn't very interesting. Most of the story unfolds through the lives of two families, the journalist Lerner and her dysfunctional parents and  the  kid who discovers the comet, Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood), and his family.   Lerner hates her father (Maximillian Schell) for ditching her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) for a girl half his age.  Meanwhile, Beiderman falls in love with the girl next door, who's mother (Denise Crosby)  has just given birth to her baby  sister. The  themes of betrayal, love, hope and loyalty are further underlined by the lottery to see who will be sanctuary in the bunkers. Needless to say, the selection procedure results in some of the characters having to make very hard choices indeed.

Meanwhile, the space shuttle (called Messiah)  sets off. Considering the government have had a year to organize the mission, their plan seems dumb in the extreme. The shuttle chases after the comet, dodging through an avalanche of bungalow-sized lumps of rock and ice, looking for a landing spot. Having no apparent armour, bits and pieces of the shuttle soon disappear under the barrage, affecting the mission. The mission is not successful, merely fragmenting the meteor into two chunks rather than destroying it. The smaller chunk arrives first, landing in the sea off the east coast of the U.S and creating a huge tidal wave.

This will  come as no surprise to anyone who has seen the  trailer, TV ads or even the posters  for the movie which clearly show a huge wave engulfing New York. Ah yes, that trailer. Anyone who paid to see the movie on the strength of the trailer will feel a bit cheated. The tidal wave scene is splendidly realized though a little short-lived.  The panic of those in the path of the wave, at first transfixed and then terrified, and sheer destructive force of the wave as it hits the city is utterly convincing.

It does, however, re-enforce the suspicion that the ambition of the movie far exceeded it's budget or the creative ability of the filmmakers. Other than the computer-generated wave, the special effects are not terribly impressive, particularly the scenes of the space flight. Some scenes are not attempted at all - a backup mission to destroy the meteor with missiles launched from Earth is described (and dismissed) in a single sentence. This would not be problem if the human characters were  interesting, but they are not, and the pace and plotting resembles a TV drama. The performances of the lead actors is uneven. Téa Leoni looks uneasy  through the movie, and we never really care what happens to her. Maxamillian  Schell might as well have faxed in his performance, while Vanessa Redgrave merely delivers a muted version of her Mission:Impossible role. Robert Duvall does  his best as the veteran astronaut in a relatively small role, but it is Morgan Freeman , as U.S president Tom Beck that provides the anchor for the movie. Freeman's demeanour is utterly presidential,  projecting trust, strength and leadership while breaking the bad news to the nation and the world. His is the moral center of the movie, recalling Henry Fonda in his role as U.S. president  in Fail Safe (a Sixties cautionary tale, where a US bomber  accidentally bombs a Russian city, forcing Fonda to order a retaliatory strike against a US city in order to avoid an all-out nuclear war).

Mimi Leder's C.V. includes episodes of E.R.(which, like this movie, involves endless heart-wringing and emotional turmoil swamped by a huge wave of pathos)  and another Dreamworks movie, The Peacemaker. Her direction is hard to fault here - it's really the story that's waterlogged.

Directed by Mimi Leder. Produced by Richard D. Zanuck & David Brown.

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