...more a story of private, inner conflicts than of outright action and adventure, a point that may have dissatisfied many theatergoers intent on being blasted out of their seats.
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Doesn´t it seem remarkable that two different movie studios would make pictures on the very same subject at exactly the same time? But it happens: Think "Dante´s Peak" and "Volcano"; and more recently "Deep Impact" and "Armageddon." The two latter films were released in the summer of 1998, and both are about attempts to divert a heavenly body on a deadly collision course with Earth, about to smash it to smithereens.
"Deep Impact" is the more cerebral of the pair, more concerned with the human drama of the situation than "Armageddon," which emphasized spectacle and thrills. "Armageddon" beat the pants off "Deep Impact" at the box office, but it didn´t provide the same food for thought.
"Deep Impact" begins innocently enough with a high school astronomy class on an outing to explore the night sky. There, a teenage boy discovers a new comet in the heavens, which upon later analysis turns out to be heading for Earth, with impact in about two years. The government tries to keep this fact hidden from the general public for fear of panic, but after about a year a female TV journalist stumbles upon the cover-up, and the secret is out.
The film goes on to tell of the government´s ill-fated attempts to stop the comet from destroying the planet, while at the same time describing the effects the impending disaster has on the lives of the movie´s two main characters--the boy and the reporter--and their familles. Because the film is as much concerned with its characters as with its special effects, it more resembles several older movies like "When Worlds Collide" and "On the Beach," with overtones of "Dr. Strangelove," than it does its summer cousin.
Elijah Wood stars as the boy who first sees the comet and Tea Leoni as the journalist who breaks the story. Perhaps afraid that their names would not be big enough draws, DreamWorks surround them with a big-name supporting cast: Robert Duvall plays the leader of the team of astronauts charged with blowing up the big rock. Morgan Freeman plays the President of the United States, and what more reassuring presence could you want than Morgan Freeman as President? Vanessa Redgrave plays the reporter´s mother and Maximillian Schell her father.
Even Charles Martin Smith has a small, uncredited part in the beginning of the film. Together, these actors give the story a very real, very personal dimension that adds to the movie´s appeal.
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