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A joint U.S.-Russian team of hot-shot rocket jockeys, led by veteran mission commander Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall), is quickly assembled and sent up to plant six nuclear-warhead "moles" in the surface, which will theoretically atomize the comet into a harmless shower of hailstones. The story itself seems torn from recent headlines: One dark day, President Beck (Freeman) announces that a speeding ball of dirty ice is on a collision course with the third rock from the sun (whoops, that's us!). For a suspense drama, "Impact" is a slack, oddly enervated and mawkish soup of largely lethargic performances by such normally robust stars as Robert Duvall, Morgan Freeman and Vanessa Redgrave. (That still leaves "Armageddon," scheduled to open July 1, whose asteroid the size of Texas could seriously one-up "Impact's" merely Manhattan-sized comet.)īut the comet is not the only smallish thing about this film. The year's first of two much-anticipated movies about space-rocks hurtling toward Earth, "Deep Impact" is an underwhelming disappointment from executive producer Steven Spielberg.
#Deep impact series
A spectacular bundle of tricks is unleashed in the finale, guaranteed to prompt jaw/carpet interface but a questionable comet-surface scene has our doughty defenders attempting to plant nukes by leaping about an original series Star Trek set streaming with dry ice. But such failure is nevertheless largely admirable, symptomatic of an attempt to meld graphic realisation of the Extinction Level Event, while asking whether mankind would lose its humanity under the shadow of apocalypse, and doing all of this within a tight two-hour movie, not a sprawling, self-indulgent butt-buster.Īround the serious "issues" of course, special effects do have their place, and these are sometimes awesome, sometimes pretty ordinary. Despite solid enough stuff from Freeman, Wood and Duvall, only Tea Leoni's rising reporter - who springs the story - enjoys enough screen time to make any sort of connection. There is, rest assured, no sign of Anthea Turner.īlending the epic with the intimate is never an easy feat, and to achieve sufficient emotional impact amid the widescale issue of entire species snuff-out, the audience has to care about the characters by the time doom looms.
#Deep impact plus
Namely, a warren of caves back on Earth loaded with tuck, designed to sustain a million people for two years while the dust settles - 200,000 boffins already selected plus 800,000 lucky Americans who'll be joining the chosen through a national lottery.
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As their mission entails an unprecedented landing on the rock to bury nukes, further contingencies are planned. And before Bruce Willis tried his luck in Armageddon, US President Morgan Freeman announces Uncle Sam's fail-safe measures.įirst up, careworn and improbably named astronaut Spurgeon Tanner (Duvall) has been fished out of retirement to join the comet-cracking crew of a joint Russo-American spaceship dubbed Messiah. In the wake of volcanoes and alien invasions, the cinematic theme du jour has careering comets on collision course: Earth. Lovelorn teen Leo Beiderman (Wood) joins his high-school astronomy class after going starry-eyed over fellow student Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski), only to spot a heavenly body that'll make the earth move for everybody. This time, though, while the planet's plight may be even bleaker, a plot of high drama dripped through intensely personal strata provides Leder with much more scope. Which rather left the studio still anxious to score. But the result somehow failed to light up the sky. Pairing George Clooney and trail-blazing director Mimi Leder (longtime collaborators on ER) on The Peacemaker seemed about as close to a surefire hit as possible for DreamWorks SKG's debut production last year.