Movie of the Week: Deep Impact

   

 

    Movie of the Week (5/12/13-5/18/13): I'm sure most of you have seen Michael Bay's blockbuster film Armageddon, which of course is about an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. But if I had to guess, I would have to say, again, that most of you probably have not seen Deep Impact. This movie came out in the same year as Armageddon and has the same basic idea about it. However, Deep Impact is not a pure action movie like Armageddon, this film is much more dramatic and in certain aspects can be better than Armageddon.
    Deep Impact is a story about an asteroid flying through space with Earth in its path. Now, that might make most of you say that it is the exact same thing as that other asteroid movie. Well, not exactly, the great thing about Deep Impact is that it digs deeper into the drama and the characters. It is not just about astronauts flying to the asteroid to destroy it, it also shows how people on Earth deal with this devastating news once they hear about it. This film gives us several characters to follow, most of which never meet in the film and we get to watch them cope with this event.
    The cast here is pretty good, there are some known and a few unknown actors, first we have Morgan Freeman as the President of the United States trying to help his nation stay calm and get through the event. Then we have Tea Leoni, who plays a journalist who at first is tracking another story but stumbles onto the asteroid story that was hidden and then reports the news about it. We also have Elijah Wood, who plays a teenager that helped discover the asteroid and then is forced to make several life altering decisions as the movie goes on. Finally, we have Robert Duvall who plays the head astronaut in the space shuttle, named The Messiah, that is sent into space to destroy the oncoming asteroid.
    There is also Vanessa Redgrave, James Cromwell, Jon Favreau, and Leelee Sobieski, who all play great supporting roles to the main characters that adds to the drama. I personally believe that the script for this film was very good because it does a great job at connecting the characters together in some way. The cast overall does a fantastic job and we like the movie for them not for the asteroid like we do in Armageddon. Again, this film is mainly focused on the characters on Earth, although there is plenty screen time of the asteroid and astronauts, because the writers want to show how people on Earth would deal with this kind of situation and they show it in just about every way possible.
    Now, I keep saying that this is a drama and although it mainly is, it is also Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg, so you can expect some good special effects. We get this with the space shots and in another important, and emotional, scene that I'm not going to get into because it might spoil some things, but you'll know it when it happens. We also have good direction from Mimi Leder, who is now mainly a T.V. director, but when she did this she knew what she was doing and brought a good movie together. Finally, what is an emotional movie without an emotional score, which is just what we get from legendary composer James Horner who wrote a beautiful score to go with the emotional scenes. Now, this movie does have its flaws of course and I'm not saying it is a better overall film than Armageddon, just different and in a good way. Leder and Spielberg give us a very emotional film told from mainly people on Earth with some scenes that might bring a tear to your eye.                                                                                                             3/4 Stars.