Deep Impact

A good old fashioned disaster movie with state of the art effects (at least for 1998) DEEP IMPACT is a fun, exciting two hour ride.

Reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) discovers the story of the approaching meteor by mistake when drilling a senator on what she thinks is an affair. Suddenly she is in front of the President (the impeccable, rock solid Morgan Freeman) who is guaranteeing her the first question when he announces the comet's impending arrival to the unsuspecting US public.

There is the requisite mission by a Soviet/US team to divert the meteor using nuclear weapons in space, but as we know from every other asteroid movie (Meteor, Armageddon) and the poster, that just ain't gonna work.

Soon the country is bracing for impact and an all star cast meets varying fates. Leoni is the only lightweight in the cast, she seems way over her head in the starring role. Everyone else is terrific, including Robert Duvall as an aging but heroic astronaut, Vanessa Redgrave as Tia's mom, a young Elijah Wood as the amateur astronomer that discovers the comet and Maximillian Schell as Leoni's father. Not sure how two actors of Redgrave and Schell's capabilities gave cinematic birth to Leoni, but they blow her off the screen.

Of course, we're all just waiting for that big old rock to hit and the moment doesn't disappoint, making sure to destroy every major landmark in the eastern US.

The screenplay by Bruce Joel Rubin (Ghost) does a far better job of introducing us to people we actually care about than a traditional disaster flick, making the conclusion more than just a bunch of explosions and tidal waves.

Although those are pretty cool too......!

Deep Impact is an enjoyable disaster movie of the first order, and pounds it's way into the earth with a solid (and explosive) B.