DEEP IMPACT
Rebecca Wan
Read another review of Deep Impact
Directed by : Mimi Leder
Written by: Bruce Joel Rubin, Michael Tolkin
Produced by : Zanuck/Brown Productions / DreamWorks SKG
Main Cast : Tea Leoni, Vanessa Redgrave, Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman, Elijah Wood, James Cromwell, Mary McCormack, Jon Favreau, Blair Underwood.
Length : Approx. 120 minutes
Rating : * * * out of * * * * *
This review might contain spoilers. Read on at your own risk!
It's hard to dislike a film that resoundingly smashes Tea Leoni to little quirky bits. However, annoying TV-comediannes-turned-overrated-leading-actresses (can we say Helen Hunt?) aside, I found it difficult to merrily shake off the "serious message" perpetuated by DEEP IMPACT (and you know how much I enjoy making fun of big budgeters with serious messages). Why? Because . . . well gee, what if a comet really did hit earth?
First off, the story. A new comet is spotted and it is on a direct collision course with earth ("earth," in Hollywoodese, meaning America). A year later, the United States government has made provisions to forcibly alter the comet's course, as well as to rescue and preserve one million U.S. citizens in newly built underground shelters if the mission to head off the comet, creepily christianed "Messiah" (that's the mission, not the comet), should fail. The rest of the film, and shame on you for expecting anything else, is all disaster and human relationships.
I feel compelled to not completely diss this film. Maybe it's because the overwhelmingly biblical undertone to DEEP IMPACT really made me shudder (us Christians just can't resist those holy metaphors). Maybe it was the sense of social guilt films like this always instill in me. You know, the feeling that I shouldn't be laughing at what are inherently cheesy disaster films, however maudlin and over-simplistic they are, because behind the bourgeois Hollywoodian ideology that so heavy-handedly renders these blockbustery offerings lies the element of veracity. Floods and twisters *do* destroy lives, damnit. The Titanic *did* sink. Volcanoes *do* errupt and kill people. For pete's sake, it's all just *so real*. Have some compassion, my parents would say.
Computer-generated effects aside, what was most sobering to me about DEEP IMPACT was not so much that its situation was realistic (people need to distinguish between a fictional rendering of say, a historical event, and the actual historical event itself), but that it was possible. Heard about the 1997 XF11, the comet that was supposed to have passed as near as 30 000 miles (this distance taken from this quoted Time article) to our planet? It turned out to be a miscalcuation, but if scientists truly found a comet that was on a close collision course with our planet ... well wouldn't that scare the beejeesus out of ya? (Naysayers are welcome to email me with condescending putdowns based on scientific evidence. It would be a relief.).
Yet DEEP IMPACT is endemic of a larger concern in mainstream cinema. Pre-millenium Hollywood, searching for new antichrists and accompanying devil causes now that the Cold War is over, has increasingly sought villainy in the external and the alien. The enemy lies more and more outside the physical boundaries of life as we understand it, and exponentially requires more and more Silicon Graphics workstations to destroy.
So I wandered out of DEEP IMPACT ready to peel back the blanket of Horner-infused moroseness (why did the James Horner soundtrack work for me this time, and not for TITANIC?) that had settled on my mind. I would use witty observations of plot holes and sparkling Libby Gelman-Waxner-type absurdities. Yet while plot holes are large and looming in DEEP IMPACT, director Leder seems to have gone a whole different way (and a curious way it is) in terms of story development. DEEP IMPACT isn't as blatantly generic as DANTE'S PEAK, or as unapologetically superficial as THE LOST WORLD. Its "man in the street" portraits -- a boy astrologer with sweetheart and both their families, an ambitious reporter and her estranged parents, the astronauts and their own young families -- are surprisingly deeply etched, and performances, from an already stellar cast (Redgrave and Duvall come instantly to mind), are good.
Instead, DEEP IMPACT resembles the disaster movies of the 70s', not those of our era. Its characters are psychologically developed but yet its narrative treats them with a curious and unfamiliar detachment, happy to blythely hurl them into the abyss of the non-sequel. Remember Charlton Heston in EARTHQUAKE, giving up his opportunity to be rescued and be with Genevieve Bujold, and allowing himself to be swept away by the flood so he could locate the bitchy and alcoholic Ava Gardner? This self-sacrifice, a tiny climax at the film's conclusion, was followed by ... no heroic repreives, no miraculous surfacing from the sinister tunnel! There is something of this in DEEP IMPACT.
So, I don't know. For me, DEEP IMPACT is still two parts predictable and unconvincing, but one part "it got to me." The latter could be attributed to my well-developed sense of paranoia, and it also could be the magic bullet-like awareness this film succeeds in producing -- one suddenly realizes that one is inextricably "in the moment." The cliche of the millenium, for me, suddenly came to life.
Can you blame me, or Mimi Leder, or anyone who watches the increasing number of space exploration movies that promulgate messages of the "we're NOT alone and what's out there are not understanding and guiding Vulcans (a la Star Trek) but hellish, brutish things" variety? Consider EVENT HORIZON, LOST IN SPACE, INDEPENDENCE DAY, and even MARS ATTACKS!
But it doesn't stop there. We are knee deep in television that uses every chance to exude millenium fear and turn-of-the-century paranoia. Seen the X-Files? Feel like telling Millenium writer Chris Carter to JUST STOP IT, ALREADY?
![[ Pic of people lookin' up at first asteroid chunk ]](/film/images/deepimpact.gif)
So all in all, I think DEEP IMPACT is really worth the S$7 I paid to watch it, even if it momentarily made me feel like if life was going to end that way there was really no point taping every single episode of the last season of Seinfield (you don't understand: SANS commercials!).
Oh, and about Tea Leoni: like Helen Hunt, I guess she has her moments.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Tonight With Gurmit.
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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