Deep Impact

A Mimi Leder movie

With Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall and others

Monika says:

Imagine you found out that the end of the world as we know it was imminent. DEEP IMPACT tries to give us an idea of how this knowledge can influence thoughts and actions of people.

Young amateur astronomer Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) one night discovers an object he has never seen before with his telescope. Scientist Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) identifies the object as an unknown comet. When he calculates its trajectory he finds out that it is going to collide with Earth in two years time. Unfortunately he can't upload the data on the observatory's server. That very night he dies in a car crash, and the authorities decide to keep this information from the public for another year for political reasons.

One year later the president of the United States (Morgan Freeman) is forced to finally inform the public about the impending disaster. At the same time he announces that a space ship has been built that will bring a team of experts to the comet. They will try to change the comet's flight path with nuclear explosions.

The first of this year's asteroid movies hit the theaters. In DEEP IMPACT the object in question is a rather modest comet (11 km long), compared to the asteroid in ARMAGEDDON that supposedly is as big as Texas. Whereas ARMAGEDDON - judging from the previews - seems to be an action flick DEEP IMPACT comes across as the classic disaster movie. The emphasis is on the fates of people and special effects are of secondary importance but still well done. DEEP IMPACT is Mimi Leder's second movie and much better than her uninspired debut THE PEACEMAKER. While the latter asked a lot of patience from the viewer DEEP IMPACT is a successful mixture of drama and science fiction.

This is one of the rare disaster movies where you can really relate to the people affected and actually think about what you would do if this happened to you. Some don't want to wait for apocalypse and end their own lives. Others drop all inhibitions and lootingly roam the streets, a very real scenario indeed. Then there are people who don't want to give up hope and wait for a miraculous rescue or remember things they haven't thought of in a long time and straighten out their personal affairs. The acting is not outstanding but good enough to keep the viewer interested in what's going on on the screen. The most impressive visual effects are saved till the end of the movie, when a giant tidal wave rolls over the north of the USA and knocks down whole cities - as an example the destruction of New York City is shown. Once more you can see the the sights go down, among them once more the Statue of Liberty, obviously the favorite toy of the FX gang.

Somewhat less impressive but well done is the impact of a comet fragment in the North Atlantic. Those are pictures reminiscent of simulations of an asteroid impact at the end of the Cretaceous period, which supposedly was responsible for the extiction of the dinosaurs and left a 100 mile wide crater in the Gulf of Mexico. The object hitting Earth in DEEP IMPACT is only one tenth the size estimated for that asteroid. Still the damage is beyond imagination. You don't really want to think about the ones caused by an impact of an even bigger celestial body.

Sounds improbable? Even if Hollywood will never produce a scientifically exact movie the presentation of events is not purely fictional. Earth was hit by several comets and asteroids in the course of its long history some of which were blamed for certain events of extinction. New techniques enable scientists to find impact craters hidden under millions of years worth of sediments like the Chicxulub crater off the Yucatan coast. New asteroids are constantly discovered in our solar system so that mankind can expect an impact in the foreseeable future - geologically speaking.

If you only want to watch one of this year's disaster movies, DEEP IMPACT will be the better choice.

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Monika Hübner