Roll-M: Deep Impact

Movie Review by Susan Sackett

Deep Impact (starring Robert, Duvall, Tea Leoni, Elijah Wood, Vanessa Redgrave, Maximilian Schell and Morgan Freeman; written by Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin; directed by Mimi Leder; rated PG-13).

The advertising copy for Paramount’s latest thriller, Deep Impact, says "Oceans will rise; cities will fall…" What they forgot to say was, "Audiences will fall asleep." For what could have been the first summer blockbuster will surely go bust, but not for lack of trying.

So many times, action pictures films have endured harsh criticism for not having character development, so it must have seemed like a good idea at the time when the writers for Deep Impact decided to actually create well-rounded characters. And they are good. But this isn’t, or shouldn’t be, a character-driven movie. It’s only about one character, that *%#! comet that’s going to cream Earth. Who cares whether or not Tea Leoni as the lead character, a rather dull TV reporter, makes amends with her father? The comet is coming, the comet is coming! But first, more TV coverage. In fact, this movie is seen almost entirely on TV. We watch people watch the tube, not the most exciting way of presenting an action thriller.

Robert Duvall, who is actually given star billing, has only minimum screen time. His job as an aging astronaut given a late-in-life mission (where have we heard this before?) is to blow the comet to smithereens. Instead, his crew blows the mission, and we end up with two, count ’em, two incoming hunks of rock. Oops – sorry, New York. The East Coast is toast.

The special effects don’t really get cranking until an hour and forty-five minutes into the film (with the exception of a couple of nice scenes of the Central Park-sized rock in space in the earlier Duvall sequences). Too little, too late. And – don’t read the next sentence if you don’t want to know how it ends – lots of the leads die, making for a rather depressing ending (I know, they died in Titanic, too, but there’s not the uplifting ending here like that film had).

The best thing in the movie is Morgan Freeman as the president. He’s very presidential; I’d vote to have his finger on the red button any day. Too bad the writers didn’t give him much more to do than address the TV audience, with inane dialogue like, "Everything’s all right. Get back to work. Continue to pay your bills," or words to that effect.

If you’re an FX fan, my advice is to pop in about half way through. You won’t have missed much, and you’ll still get to go along for the final ride, which is spectacular.

TWO AND A HALF OWLS (OUT OF FIVE)

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