Deep Impact (1998)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

An Exercise In Nonsense

Strong acting helps the film overcome an uncertain premise and create characters that hold our attention absolutely.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Deep Impact is an amazing movie with great actors and incredible story

Deep Impact, from the days an astronomer jams in a floppy disk to snatch some evidence of a doomsday comet's trajectory then fumbles with a brick of a mobile phone in his car into a fatal road crash isn't going to be dazzlingly cool and contemporary. Instead of audiovisual spectacle this disaster movie, and it does conform to the genre, offers something different on the human element with a complex and well-developed ancillary cast sub-plot mesh with everyday issues all suddenly coloured by the threat of heaven-borne apocalypse. There's great actors and genuine humour that gives this film a lot more heart and soul than your usual sci-fi or end-of-the-world-is-nigh film with all the best special effects and CGI the new millennium can offer. A more more incisive and more thoughtful film than many critics seem to have admitted. With all the news media focus I even thought of Network. A disaster flick more touchy-feely than scream-like hell. With just the advent of IT evident it's also a little naive and cute, a testament to the brave Nineties. There are some noisy space sequences and crash bangs, but they merely punctuate the best parts, the human drama.

In 1998, everyone was getting ready for the big Year 2000. People had mixed feelings about the whole thing, with many predicting global disasters on an apocalyptic scale. Hollywood decided that the best way to address these fears was to monetise them, and created two movies—Deep Impact and Armageddon—that shared the same basic plot:* giant asteroid is heading to Earth * it's going to hit and wipe out pretty much all life on the planet * we might be able to stop it just in time * this will involve sending astronauts up in space to land on the asteroid and blow it upToday Deep Impact is widely seen as the ginger-haired step-cousin of Armageddon, but I personally believe this is an unfair assessment. Both movies were released in summer, and both performed extremely well at the box office, although Deep Impact (with box office returns of $350 million against a budget of just $80 million) was easily the more profitable of the two.Deep Impact begins strongly, with an innocent scientist burning to death after just three scenes have elapsed. It's a great start. Twelve months flash by, and we're introduced to Téa Leoni, who was smoking hot at the time this movie was made, with no suggestion of the sad decline that would later follow.We also meet Elijah Wood, playing some awkward little scrote that nobody cares about.Morgan Freeman naturally gets a part, because if the world is going to end we need a decent voice-over.Most of all, ladies and gentlemen, we are graced with the presence of a dangerously jailbaity 15 year old Leelee Sobieski, who looks as though she just might be legal, but absolutely is not.The plot unfolds pretty much as you'd expect, but unlike other movies of its type, Deep Impact commendably resists the temptation of a predictable 'everything's-going-to-be-OK-now' conclusion. Earth still gets hit, squillions of people die—including Téa Leoni!—and the Twin Towers are destroyed by some reasonably convincing CGI.It's not without its weaknesses, but when compared with other summer disaster films, Deep Impact can hold its head up pretty high. And it gave us Leelee Sobieski, for which I am eternally grateful.I rate Deep Impact at 23.31 on the Haglee Scale, which works out as a perky 7/10 on IMDb.

Whereas the technology that made Armegedon stand out as a visually desirable Michael Bay movie, Deep Impact's at superior story still holds water. In tterms of superior scientific accuracy, deeper characters, and compelling story Deep Impact had aged well and continues incite deep emotion and enjoyment.