DEEP IMPACT (1998) **1/2 out of ****
Directed by Mimi Leder
Written by Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin
Starring Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell and Morgan Freeman
Deep Impact officially opens the summer season of big-budget action extravaganzas, but it's different than most other disaster movies, which is both good and bad. The typical disaster movie has a big cast of one-dimensional characters and really big special effects. Deep Impact is no exception. Here's the premise: a comet the size of Manhattan is headed towards Earth. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that something will hit Earth, providing us with special effects. But Earth can't be destroyed! Oh no. We need a happy ending because this is a disaster movie. The two go hand-in-hand. Sorry to give that away.
Téa Leoni plays a reporter named Jenny Lerner(from the random name box) with a father(Maximilian Schell) who has left her mother(Vanessa Redgrave, in three scenes) for another woman. The expository scenes are pretty much a waste for this type of movie, even if they are relatively well-acted. It's the shallow characters that are the problem. Another problem is that WE KNOW that the comet is coming, and the characters do not. This is not dramatic irony. It's frustration. Leoni keeps us informed and she spends half the movie in the news anchor position, keeping us up to date. It's a dull role.
Morgan Freeman plays the President of the United States, in a authoritative, statesman-like manner, and it works well, except for the final, terribly-written scene(you'll know what I mean). The plan is to put one million people, by means of a national lottery, into underground caves. I was surprised that the movie didn't show people arguing over this. The American public would not voluntarily accept death like the characters in Deep Impact do. The President also reveals that the largest spaceship ever constructed is going to land on the comet, and blow it up.
Robert Duvall plays Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner, an aging astronaut on board the "Messiah." The space scenes with Duvall are the best part of the movie. Duvall carries the film with an excellent, veteran performance, making a silly "Moby Dick" reading to a fellow astronaut bearable. But the action scene in which Duvall pilots the spacecraft onto the comet is ridiculous. I asked myself how a giant ship like that could maneuver through all that space debris without getting destroyed. And when the ship lands on the comet, the plot thickens. The "Messiah" must get off the comet within a certain time frame before the sun rises(I don't get it). The planting of the nuclear charges is sloppily intercut with shots of the obligatory countdown. First, it's 6 hours, but suddenly a couple minutes later(in movie time) it's down to 1 hour! Then one minute! This is the film's fatal flaw: pacing.
Elijah Wood plays Leo Beiderman, a young amateur astronomer who "discovers" the comet. His family is selected by the lottery to go live in the caves because of his discovery. But he doesn't want to leave his astronomer girlfriend behind. I won't reveal what he does to bring her along, but you can probably guess. These scenes don't work well because she doesn't have any significant dialogue, or character to speak of. These are cardboard characters, and we don't feel for them.
Looking back, it looks like I trashed the movie. But I did give it a **1/2. That's because it was entertaining. It was worth my $5 to see New York City get toppled by a tidal wave, even if the effects were not terribly convincing, like Titanic was. A movie like this needs the audience to care about the characters, but I didn't. A big movie with world proportions like Deep Impact should be memorable, but it wasn't. But it had potential.
D. Mandlsohn baybloor@idirect.com
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