Deep Impact

In Deep Impact, the audience is left with two questions. The first of two is what will you do if there is only a year left for you to live. The second question is how will you do Earth if all life is set to be erased in just a year? We get to explore these two questions in the movie.

Deep Impact’s other counterpart movie is Armageddon whose star cast is Bruce Wilis. This movie will be released later this summer Armageddon’s marketing states it as the ‘uplifting’ version of Deep Impact. If that is indeed the case, Deep Impact can indeed be termed as the decadent one of the two And indeed the film goes on to show this.

Leo Beiderman, a teenager and an aspiring astronomer played by Elijah Wood, accidentally comes across a giant comet and the rest of the plot revolves around a devastating detail that he does not know about. The comet is on its way to Earth and the collision would result in an Andromeda Strain type of scenario. The size of the comet is equivalent to that of Manhattan and weighs around 500 billion tons, the sheer mass of Mt. Everest. On its trajectory, the closest intersection is Earth and its only thought is how it can kill all life. The plot then goes on a shift from deep space to Jenny Lerner’s, an MSNBC reporter and Tea Leoni’s character, the sad investigation into a White House sex scandal’s aftermath- the Andromeda Strain. With a few questions, she managed to obtain sufficient information to get US President Morgan Freeman to provide a detailed explanation of the impending catastrophe.

Both the Americans and Russians are training hard for the Wolf-Beiderman comet which is believed to come and destroy the earth. During the time that they were only aware of both governments, they were constructing a spaceship in the aegis of Messiahs that was supposed to fly to the comet to plant nuclear devices on the surface of it so they could annihilate it. Ample extra measures were also adopted by the USA, such as building big underground caves that could shelter around 1,000000 people, and could make them last there for two years.

The screenplay by Michael Tolkin (The Player) and Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) looks at the disaster through the eyes of too many characters and that’s where it falls short. I look back at Titanic because it has only one narrative and that is led by the characters Jack and Rose and that’s why any viewer will always be rooting for them and understand how they feel during the time of their predicament. However, with Deep Impact, there are so many protagonists all vying for the scant screen time that is available to them.

Therefore, we are left with attempting to piece together the various narratives and attempting to empathize with a large number of, cliché, flat characters. Given that there is simply no emotional investment that we feel when the tragedy strikes, we are left with images of women abandoning kids and families coming together and families getting torn apart. I was hoping for a little bit more from Bruce Joel Rubin, I know he did not write the best films, except for Jacob’s Ladder a horror-thriller that I believe was right as it raised some existential questions about life and death. I am not quite certain as to why Bruce Joel Rubin chose not to refine his Deep Impact in the same insightful writing style.

The big names attached to the film, Freeman, Duvall, and Vanessa Redgrave are only there for publicity. Their roles in the movie are small. Duvall has the largest of the parts. I’ll say this though, Freeman looks like a real President and talks like one, and so far he is the best onscreen President. He is even better than Harrison Ford (Air Force One). A more significant role is given to a stiff Leoni, who doesn’t seem to fit when doing newscasts. As a talented comedienne, Leoni is rather unfit for the part of Lerner that has been entrusted to her.

Composer James Horner is another one who seems out of sync. The Blind Sight score is just the Blind Sight score minus the heartbreaking singing of Titanic. At times, it seems as if Horner has gone on a little holiday, and he later gets replacements for some scenes in his Titanic soundtrack. If you know anything about Horner’s work, every soundtrack seems to be similar: His Titanic score was like his Braveheart soundtrack which was like his Apollo 13 soundtrack, and so forth. That kind of soundtrack for this movie would be funny if Apollo 13 did not keep stealing the music. Come on James.

Now for the rough news: If you plan to watch Deep Impact for its SFX and the wreckage of eastern coastline cities then you have already witnessed all that in the trailers. Yes, we can thank the incompetent people working in the marketing division for airing all the good parts of the movie. Unfortunately, even the advertisements qualify to be slightly better than the actual movie when it comes to the rubbles of Earth that’s because, in the ads, we do not have to spend an hour and forty minutes for the destruction to happen. Although some of the effects are phenomenal those giant tidal waves crashing toward the camera are incredible others are from the 1970s. The worst effects are those of the astronauts in space and on the comet.

Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker) employs a great deal of steady cam in Deep Impact but still manages to avoid making the film feel commercial. Thanks to her light hand on the camera, there is just the right amount of wobbly images. Mimi, did we have to whirl the camera like that? This technique may be used, but not in the middle of an exchange. One of the shots that made my spine tingle was a shot of the traffic situation on the highway. A camera shot where the camera is mounted in a rotating mode and is focused on multiple people more than makes my head spin. The comparison suggests that Deep Impact is more complicated than Peacemaker since it was easier to reach a climax with the former rather than the latter. However, she was still able to do a good job.

Going back to MSNBC, there are some shocking product placements and affiliations in Deep Impact. For instance: Leoni is from the NBC show The Naked Truth, Leoni is from MSNBC working as Lerner reporter, and as Lerner goes to look up E.L.E. she goes on the MSNBC page, with Internet Explorer 4.0, a Microsoft product, of course. There’s Knhzzg Ydfr who completes the ‘miscellaneous cast’ – Laura Innes and Ron Eldard, both from ER aired on NBC. And also the people who work behind the camera: ER director Mimi Leder and Deep Impact producer Steven Spielberg who directs ER television series. Quite possibly it was a movie solely produced for airing on NBC and then titled “Deep Impact’’

But I was deeply saddened especially about all that was said above. And this is not intended as an insult, but rather as a compliment. And we will always come back again and again to precisely this core issue. The final effect of this film was not as strong as it could have been, it required more conviction. Of course, you can’t expect much from a NASA biologist but the fact remains that Deep Impact was useful in some aspects to me. Only this time it didn’t bull’s-eye and went sideways, at least feeling, without a doubt, better.

When one sees the film’s title, “Deep Impact”, one is expected of them to realize that there is a level of effect the movie has against its audience. However, this is not the case as the movie does not have any deep sense of emotion attached to it. With Godzilla set to release, one can rest assured that Deep Impact will be forgotten in a few days. Movies with special effects such as Godzilla have massive combat advertising campaigns and media marketing ensuring the movie does very well. While I would recommend watching Godzilla, it would be best to sit through the movie a few days after its initial release. Moving onto the more entertaining films, I know Godzilla will make me forget about Deep Impact within seconds as the sheer force of special effects will take over.

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