It seems impossible to discuss Deep Impact without also addressing the other major release from 1998 about a massive asteroid barreling toward Earth and the handful of people sent to prevent its collision. Where Michael Bay’s Armageddon was a shamelessly cheesy, aggressively loud and mostly successful bit of summer blockbusting (and the highest-grossing film of that year, if such bits of trivia matter to you), director Mimi Leder’s unwitting companion piece, which arrived in theaters two months earlier, is more in the classically satisfying tradition of the disaster movies of the 1970s. Real attention is paid to its massive ensemble and interlocking stories, all of which are at the service of a seemingly inevitable, tragic outcome. The appeal is in seeing these characters divert that outcome.
The screenplay was written by Bruce Joel Rubin, who had recently won an Academy Award for his inspired work on 1990’s Ghost, and Michael Tolkin, whose previous films had dealt with big ensembles, and Leder had cut her teeth in the television sphere (especially the often propulsive “ER,” with its own massive cast in interlocking stories). These three filmmakers, in other words, could not have been more perfect to bring a story like this one to life. There are special effects, eventually, but the movie is far more about the pyrotechnics of a civilization on the edge of extinction. World leaders who are usually at odds work together because they must, and political gamesmanship completely dissipates in the shadow of a disaster that will render it pointless.
That ensemble is a rich, deep one, beginning with a pair of teenagers: Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) and Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) are young, dumb, and in love, until Leo notices an odd celestial body during a high school star party. Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni), an MSNBC journalist vying for a news anchor position, latches onto an intriguing story of potential scandal involving the Secretary of the Treasury (a cameoing James Cromwell), until the casual mention of a name, “Ellie,” lands her in the middle of a global crisis and in a secret meeting with the President of the United States (Morgan Freeman, playing exactly the man we want explaining things to other characters and us).
It turns out that an asteroid the size of New York City is on an inexorable path toward Earth, the surface of which will be destroyed upon impact. Every country on Earth has been alerted, and a team has been assembled between the United States and Russia. Led by Spurgeon “Fish” Tanner, the Messiah (a loaded chosen name, to be sure) is a manned mission armed with nuclear bombs, which they will drill deep into the surface of the asteroid. The hope is that the combined force of the bombs will explode the asteroid and simply send debris to burn harmlessly in Earth’s atmosphere. Obviously, it all goes wrong. A crew member dies and another is blinded when the comet shifts into the sunlight, and instead of destroying the celestial body, it is simply broken into two pieces.
As a new plan is put into motion, involving a series of intercontinental ballistic missiles launched from the surface, the drama low deepens, becoming sadder and more sober as the potential for hopelessness engulfs the citizens of Earth. Jenny, estranged from her father Jason (Maximilian Schell) for leaving her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) and marrying a much younger woman, must reconcile with both relationships before the end. Leo proposes to Sarah and, as the now world-famous amateur astronomer, attempts to get their families’ names on the list of individuals selected for a series of underground caves, which will be a sanctuary for the survivors (Richard Schiff, Betsy Brantley, Denise Crosby, and Gary Werntz play their parents).
Even up above, the drama is compelling, as every member of Tanner’s team is given a distinctive personality, and each performance is strong: Duvall as the widower who seems to know that there isn’t going to be a happy ending for them, Ron Eldard as the heroic commander who eventually loses his eyesight, Mary McCormack and Blair Underwood as two different sides of a coin when it comes to the utility of self-sacrifice, and Jon Favreau and Aleksandr Baluev deftly filling out the ensemble as the medical officer and Russian nuclear specialist, respectively. As the end draws near, a particularly affecting scene has each of them contacting their families for the last time.
The film is filled with scenes that directly connect us to the human plight on the ground and in space, instead of simply filling time with a lot of sound and fury. Even the one significant action sequence here, depicting the Messiah crew’s attempt to place those bombs, is punctuated by an act of God that kills everything, including the theoretical reason for us to feel tension, for how quickly and mercilessly it happens. A motorcycle ride away from the encroaching devastation of a wave of water, for once, doesn’t feel like it automatically would spell success. For some, survival may be a mere matter of luck. Deep Impact captures that harrowing space in between: We get the inspirational speech after it’s all over, but then again, we also get the juxtaposition of people who know it’s the end for them.
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