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Deep Impact
*1/2
Cinema
Releases - May 15,
1998
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Directed by Mimi Leder. Written by Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel
Rubin. Starring Tea Leoni, Morgan Freeman, Robert Duvall, Elijah Wood, Vanessa
Redgrave, Maximilian Schell, Leelee Sobieski, James
Cromwell.
Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg
and David Geffen must have had some reason for setting up their company,
Dream Works. After all, these are men who could be influential over almost
any studio -- they didn't need to create one of their own. I am told that
they wanted to do more curious projects that still needed reasonably large
budgets, but so far, I haven't seen anything that's very revolutionary. Their
first film was "The Peacemaker", a routine action movie. We've also had "Paulie:
A Parrot's Tale", a much derided children's movie. And after some brief critical
success with the historical drama "Amistad", DreamWorks has given us
"Deep Impact", an undistinguished disaster
flick.
You know it's going to be just as formulaic and
false as every other summer effects film when the director appears on television
raving about how "original" and "realistic" it is, since they always do,
making the ludicrous claim that it's "character-based, and really
intelligent!"
Although the film has met with a few rave reviews,
almost agreeing with the above, I think that those reviews are overreactions
at the fact that the film isn't as risible as it could have been, and does
not have mindless masses of action. I am not as impressed. The film is still
poor.
In the film, a 7.5-mile comet is about to hit
the Earth, destroying life on our precious planet by causing large tidal
waves capable of destruction, and gales of dust capable of blocking off light
from the Sun. Of course, a comet destroying the Earth is a realistic possibility,
as the filmmakers have said in countless interviews, insulting the intelligence
of the viewers before they even see the film, since most of us have already
heard this.
Anyway, the film gets too bogged down in technical
details and the particulars of its own set-up, rather than the more general
implications of its idea, that of a comet hitting Earth. Crucial plot turns
are determined through very specific little events, a symptom of the film's
not wanting to deal with how such a situation would really play
out.
The human story, which should be more important,
is represented through the characters of a news reporter, played by Tea Leoni,
and a kid, played by Elijah Wood. The news reporter wants to make peace with
her father, who seems to have no communication with her at all, and her idiot
mother (played by Vanessa Redgrave, who's obviously desperate for a part),
a very strange lady, who, like a lot of the characters in this film, talks
by rambling rubbish. People in "Deep Impact" talk to themselves while they
talk to each other, as if this were "Shine" with spaceships. The kid is some
little pratt who always seems to be dramatically pausing with strained, worried
eyes, and who has been hailed as a young master scientist, because he first
sees the comet. Hmm... I don't consider myself to be a master scientist,
but I too can look through a telescope, so maybe I would be, in this movie.
His story is concerned with his romance with some girl who has one speaking
line, a few screaming lines, and the amazing ability to run faster than the
tidal wave, which is, according to the President of the United States (Morgan
Freeman), faster than the speed of sound.
Some of these peoples' scenes have the potential
to work powerfully, because they show them pathetically trying to save a
handful of others, and having to make painful choices in their actions. This
shows the desperation and tragedy of what could happen if The System tried
to realistically deal with the end of the world. But the film weasels away
from all this, going back to technical details, and saving everybody with
a cop-out of an ending. This is truly sick, bragging that you have real issues
to deal with, and then not having the guts to confront them.
This is not to mention how slight it all seems.
Nothing much happens in the film, there are a small number of scenes which
are simply dragged out to fill a two-hour running time. At least the technical
details make the film easy to sit through -- there's a solid score by James
Horner, and the cinematography by German cameraman Dietrich Lohmann is beautiful.
It manages to emphasise the colour of modern settings, and seem rich rather
than gaudy, reminiscent of the work of Russell Carpenter, Caleb Deschanel
and even Nestor Almendros.
It's unbelievable that this film was written by
Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin. The former wrote the hilarious dark
satire "The Player", and was nominated for an Oscar. The latter wrote "Ghost"
and won. A word of advice, guys. Don't sell out like this again, you're
embarrassing yourselves. And a word of advice to the director of "Deep Impact",
Mimi Leder. You're good at craftsmanship -- this film is well-made. But you're
lousy at telling a story, let alone a message, so stick to action films that
know their place, that don't try and take on inappropriate issues, and that
don't make me so angry.
COPYRIGHT©
1998 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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