Deep Impact | | Cast : | Robert Duvall, Téa Leoni, Elijah Wood, Morgan Freeman | | Director : | Mimi Leder | | Studio : | Paramount Home Video | | Format : | Color, Closed-captioned, Widescreen | | Released Date : | May 08, 1998 | | DVD Released Date : | October 05, 2004 | | Language : | English (Dubbed) | | Audience Rating : | PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested) | | | BUY THIS DVD FROM AMAZON |
Customer Reviews
| Rating |  | | Date | August 02, 2005 | | Summary | The best 'End of the World" movie I've seen in a while | Content
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Forget the recent, forgettable cataclysmic films like The Day After Tomorrow or The Core, or this film's '98 summer rival Armageddon, Deep Impact proves to be powerful and moving, as well as intensely terrifying in its realism. You won't see many films of this nature that don't substitute special effects for a substantial storyline or characters. This isn't so much a disaster film as it is a human drama. The characters are played with depth, their interactions between each other seem realistic in the event that something like this were to happen.
I hear people talk about this movie being cheesey. Well, these people must have somehow missed a showing of Armageddon or any other disaster movie that has come out since then. Armageddon had a complete bogus storyline about oil drillers who are sent to blow up a comet. Give me a break. At least in Deep Impact they were certified astronauts and they failed the first time they tried to blow the comet up, as well as the government who also failed with trying divert the comet with ground missiles. That's what I liked about Deep Impact, it was so much more real than any of those other films, and it wasn't hard to place myself into this situation and imagine what it would be like for me and my family and what we would do. And isn't that the point of disaster films?
So if you go to disaster movies soley on the fact that you want to see some shiz knocked down or blown up and people in peril, go watch one of those other crappy movies I mentioned before, but if you want to see a truly down-to-earth (no pun intended), realistic and emotionally heartfelt movie about the test of the human spirit through an insurmountable problem, Deep Impact is for you.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 29, 2005 | | Summary | Little Impact | Content
| A precocious reporter stumbles upon information that a giant comet is heading directly to earth, almost certain to cause human extinction. That is the backdrop for the story DEEP IMPACT. But, the story follows that same reporters psychological issue concerning her father's divorce and second marriage, and she's willing to go to her grave without accepting that union. Director Mimi Leder has a meteor the size of Mount Everest plummeting toward Earth but she's not comfortable focusing on it leaving earthly extinction as a subplot.
The protagonist in the story is reporter Jenny Lerner (played by an amateurish Tea Leoni), whom introduces the world to the comet and spends the rest of the film more miserable over her parent's divorce then the lonely mother. This lack of compassion pays off in Leder's world where Dad gets his. This sort of melodrama is far more likely to destroy the planet than a giant meteor. Meanwhile, off the planet, the always-impressive Robert Duvall portrays the most understated astronaut in the history of space. Unlike, Loeone, he is an active character; he does take action to save the earth instead of wallowing in its pending destruction. This works well with the sturdy but corny performance of Morgan Freeman as the humble President. His is a leader of the free world where there could not be partisan politics; he would've gotten 100 percent of the vote. There is also another subplot involving an amateur teen astronomer (who first notices the asteroid) ... Elijah Wood (The Lord of the Rings) fits nicely into the pretentious disaster.
The DVD has a below standard transfer with a lot of breakup in the dark areas of the picture but the audio is impressive. There are no special features beyond the all-telling trailer. DEEP IMPACT was Dreamworks entry in the comet wars against Disney's ARMAGEDDON. While that film is in no way a great film, it did not take itself too seriously and Disney won the box-office battle.
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| Rating | | | Date | July 19, 2005 | | Summary | Cheesy Impact | Content
| This movie was terrible. It built up all this emotional stuff just to get your tear ducts going. I thought it was soooo cheesy. I felt exploited. At least with Armageddon, I knew it was a Bruckheimer with all the macho stuff and the great explosions. This movie started out to be serious and then melted into runny cheese. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 11, 2005 | | Summary | Morgan Freeman for President! | Content
| Whether Morgan Freeman or James Earl Jones is our best black president (both have now played one) is a tossup. Freeman may have the edge. There's real gravitas behind his gravity, and his oratory in the oval office is splendid. In a crisis, either actor is preferable to the current occupant, and there's certainly a crisis looming in "Deep Impact." A comet is on a dead reckoning to obliterate Earth and astronauts are enroute to blow it up.
If you think you've seen this movie before, you have ("Armageddon," "On the Beach," "Meteor"), but you haven't seen it done this badly. In addition to Robert Duvall, as an astronaut, James Cromwell, Vanessa Redgrave and Maximillian Schell appear in throwaway parts, yet their parts are the ones you don't want thrown away. Mimi Leder has no clue how to direct them. Every scene with Tea Leoni, as a TV reporter-turned-anchor, needs to be reshot with a real actress.
As the world awaits doomsday, with the attendant geopolitical run-up to it, there is compelling potential in how humanity will cope. What a picture that might make in this age of CGI, starry casts and Steven Spielberg (who, unfortunately, only produced here.) Instead, the script is interested in teenage romance, families torn apart, panic in the streets, and how MSNBC reports the news (other networks don't exist here.) If MSNBC thought "Deep Impact" was a promotional coup, it is certainly having second thoughts now.
There are three compensations. A pre-Frodo Elijah Wood gets his first grown-up screen kiss. Freeman can deliver the silliest of lines with such sincerity he really should run for office. And Duvall has a few moving moments chatting with a blinded astronaut. But the movie exudes understated self-importance. Characters face adversity or die with such nobility that to criticize "Deep Impact" at all seems nitpicky. It's not as though the fate of the world really was at stake. It's only a movie. |
| Rating | | | Date | July 05, 2005 | | Summary | Deep Impact - DVD | Content
| I like watching a film that I can watch in mixed company without being too embarrased about the content or language. |
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