Deep Impact (Special Collector's Edition)

One of the greatest disaster movies of all time - on par with "Titanic" and "Dante's Peak" - "Deep Impact" centers on the real-life possibility of a comet on a collision course with Earth, something that's happened before in the distant past and could happen again in the future. What's highly important about the premise is that, this time around, it's handled realistically - from the public reaction to the desperate attempts to find some way, any way, to stave off the inevitable, to the government's attempts to conceal their knowledge of the looming collision behind a wall of secrecy. Even more impressive is that the filmmakers have pulled all this off simultaneously with a movie that views humanity and its behavior in its darkest hour in a surprisingly optimistic light, even including the 'secretive governments', who usually come off very badly in this sort of movie scenario. Whether or not things would play out this way in terms of people's actions is impossible to say, but it's a refreshing path for the movie to take compared to the usual all-out chaos erupting. Interstingly, many of the brightest and most hopeful parts of "Deep Impact" are what have turned many off the movie: the acts of genuine altruism in the most terrifying circumstances, the reunion of estranged loved ones during the final days before the comet's impending arrival, etc.

A last-ditch effort is indeed made to divert the comet using a space shuttle frantically armed during the last few months before the news of the collision course went public, an astronaut crew of crack experts and spaceflight veterans and an unproven, untested plan that's all anybody could come up with in what, relative to the complexity of the task, is extremely short notice. Whether the exact mechanics of the plan and certain effects would be technically feasible is, I suppose, debateable, but it comes off as far more plausible than some other movies of this nature; accurate 95% of the time and when it arguably misses, it's in the details, not in a huge gaping hole in logic.

Visually awesome and dramatically moving, with great performances from Morgan Freeman, Tea Leoni, Robert Duvall, and, really, the whole ensemble cast. Cerebral, thrilling and usually highly believable; a credit to the disaster genre.

If you like serious science fiction you gotta have this one...

This has to be one of the most boring doomsday movies I have ever seen. The director tries so hard to touch upon the dynamics of the human condition that she misses her mark entirely. The movie also presents a scenario that is riddled with abusrd scientific presumptions which would make the movie rather comical if it weren't so boring.

In her attempts at presenting a serious and stoic scenario, Leder directs the actors and the scenes as if they are teetering between absurd comedy and a monotone drama. The characters appear so apathetic that there's no touching upon human emotion because it simply isn't acted out. Morgan Freeman's performance as the President invokes neither a sense of perseverance or desperation: it's just a stick-to-the-script performance at best. Freeman's monotonous speeches have a flair more of "We're screwed, what can I tell you?" and hardly invoke a sense of courage or perserverance in the face of danger.

The worst part of this film is the way in which it presents the doomsday scenario. Although this film tries hard at being realistic in every way, the pseudo-science in this film is laughable. As most in the world observed recently in Indonesia, you can hardly escape a 60' tsunami when you're a few blocks from the coast. How are people supposed to escape a 500' tsunami hitting Manhattan when they're only a few blocks away from the beach???? Absurd!

Apart from the absurd science suggested, the movie is simply boring! The dialogue is slow, monotonous and uninspiring. A very shallow film with little impact. Rent if you must but don't buy.

Loved this movie. Found it to be realistic and very suspenseful. Acting was excellent. Special effects were first rate.

Art houses and college film courses sometimes use a theme along the lines of "Overlooked Films," movies that were not warmly received by either the critics or the public but deserve a better fate. This movie epitomizes that class.

Often after a movie like this one has screened, the decent common folk exiting the theater will think they've just seen a pretty good yarn. But the "intelligentsia" -- like amazon's lead reviewer above -- will hate it. True, this film is pure Hollywood, but in the best sense: a taut and economical script, stock characters we can't help but come to care about, and a carefully contrived ending that packs an emotional wallop. The "cultural elite" and 2nd-year grad students can go watch "Persona," myself, I'll curl up with a large popcorn and coke and allow myself to just enjoy the show!

This was Dreamworks first release, and Spielberg's populist fingerprints are all over this. It was also Mimi Leder's first theatrical direction, and it benefits from her TV commercial training, bringning a disciplined, unpretentious eye. The acting is uniformly solid, Morgan Freeman is splendid as the President who must preside over the Apocalypse.

If there is a weakness in Deep Impact, it's Tea Leoni in the lead role, who seems a bit detached (dare I say, "stoned"?), although she does manage to help drive the plot along. Veterans such as Robt Duvall, Max Schell, and Lynn Redgrave earn their salaries.

The film ultimately succeeds because in the end it manages to lift the human pathos of a worldwide disaster above the "wow" special effects, a difficult assignment. They may be hokey to the intelligentsia, but the timeless qualities of heroism, devotion to family, and self sacrifice for the good of others are the stuff that make for moving drama; there is actually something to be learned from this movie. As Freeman says in his last speech in front of a half-destroyed US Capitol Building, "Cities fall, but we can rebuild them. And heroes die, but they are remembered..."