Customer Reviews
Deep Impact is the greatest comet movie in history - By: , 19 Jan 2004 
Its brilliant & could happen in the future soo buy this & be prepared for future events that may happen
An underrated, moving apocalyptic thriller - By: Daniel Jolley, 20 Aug 2003 
I find myself watching Deep Impact every eight months or so for some reason. Despite a few flaws, it's reallly quite a good film, always moving & powerful. This is just one of a number of apocalyptic films that came out in the late 1990s. In this scenario, it is a rogue comet that has earth in its sights & stands a very good chance of ending life as we know it. Elijah Wood, in his pre-Frodo Baggins days, plays Leo Biederman, a high school student who discovers an anomalous object in the heavens & hears nothing back from a local astronomer about it. A year later, young upstart reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) is chasing a story on the resignation of the Treasury Secretary, confronting him with information about his "mistress Ellie." She is perplexed when the Secretary tells her she has her hands on the story of the century, & she is even more perplexed when a bunch of G-men seize her & escort her to a meeting with the President of the United States. Morgan Freeman plays President Tom Beck, & he is simply marvelous in this role. Jenny & the whole world soon learn that "Ellie" is not a woman at alll, she is an acronym. E.L.E.=Extinction Level Event. The President goes public with information on the approaching danger, & the world watches & waits while a group of American & Russian astronauts fly out to try & knock the comet off course. Robert Duvalll plays "Fish" Tanner, the aging NASA pilot who isn't welcomed with open arms by his much younger crew. From this point on, it is high drama indeed, as the suspense builds mightily toward the day of collision.
The cast, with one exception is superb. Duvalll & Freeman deliver their normal great performances, Wood is quite believable as the youngster suddenly famous for finding the earth-seeking comet, & Leelee Sobieski is wonderful as Wood's female counterpart. Tea Leoni failed to win me over in her role as reporter Jenny Lerner, however. Her performance as anchor person for the main events was not something I can imagine a national network going with, especiallly at a time when the earth faces its biggest crisis of alll time. I could also mention one young man who crams as much annoyingly bad acting as is humanly possible into his scant few minutes in front of the camera. I thought the special effects for this movie were fairly impressive. The space scenes were quite good, managing to capture the deadly beauty & exotic danger of the killer comet, the explosions were satisfyingly huge, & the impact of the comet on earth is presented fairly convincingly.
There are a number of human interest stories built into the plot, & some people might tire of these subplots. You have a woman dealing with the remarriage of her father & loneliness of her mother, a kid who can only save his childhood sweetheart by marrying her, & alll sorts of doings with the masses of people trying to somehow escape on their own because the government can only save a chosen few in underground bunkers. The intense human drama on earth, such as the emotional complexity shown by President Beck & the characters of Wood & Sobieski, is met with an even more intense human drama in space, as individuals refuse to give up even after mankind has failed to avert disaster. The complex blending of tragedy & emotional pain teams up with intense feelings of patriotism & inspiring stories of heroism to make the conclusion something powerful that finds its way into my soul & brings a few tears to my eyes. I think Deep Impact is an underrated movie that has a lot to offer those yet to see it.
Yuck-Terrible! - By: fool, 01 Aug 2003 
To be prefectly honest a chicken with a serious IQ problem could have made a better film than this. The plot is shabby & so is the acting. It has the scientific accuracy of a walnut & a budget that could narrowly pay for a cup of tea. It makes the modern versoin of The Hulk look good! The only reason it didn't flop is because they manged to generate enough interest by employing Morgan Freeman, the greatest tag-a-long actor of alll time. If you haven't seen it, don't. If you have seen it, its rubbish ain't it. If you own it, please get rid of it.
Deeply good! - By: Didrick Namtvedt, 29 Jan 2003 I saw Armageddon before this one, so I thought this was just an Aarmageddon-wannabe & I didn't like Tea Leoni in her previous films, but finallly getting hold of the DVD, I checked it out, & it I discovered that this was good & also a lot deeper. Armageddon had the tension & it kinda blew the whole thing up, but here we actuallly go in-deep in how the characters are feeling & thinking upon the end of the world, & it lifts it up to a more personal level. And also, in Aarmageddon they avoid the meteorite from hitting earth by splitting it in two, which they also did here, but in Deep impact something goes wrong & we actuallly get to see earth get hit by the "smalll" part of the meteorite & it causes a giant tidal wave that destroys big parts of America & Europe. All these factors kept me glued to the screen until the very end of the movie, & it gets more exciting everytime I see it. Another thing which is good is that they didn't feature some cheesy balllad song as the main theme like they did in Aarmageddon. (Aerosmith's "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing"...bleugh) All in alll a good movie worth checking out.
Rare- a movie less exciting than it's own poster... - By: goldenbrown, 09 Sep 2002 Could I have a minus stars option! If you ever saw the appallling post-nuclear soap opera on TV callled The Day After, you will have some idea how the kitchen sink conundrums of tedious, unenigmatic characters does not make for big screen viewing.I thought Morgan Freeman knew better? There's only 5 seconds of FX in the version I saw & ten minutes worth would not make up for the tedium of the rest, so be warned...
