Deep Impact deserves credit for breaking new ground in the action-movies field, and I'm not talking about the terrific special effects.
In addition to a giant comet and a gargantuan tidal wave, the film spends time and attention on the emotional life of its characters. There's plenty to be emotional about, too, since they face imminent extinction.
Danger arrives in the form of a huge comet racing earthward. The president (Morgan Freeman) launches a desperate space mission, while earthbound characters grapple with the crisis on a personal level.
Ambitious TV reporter Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) is miserable because her father (Maximilian Schell) dumped her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) in favor of a nubile trophy wife.
A teen-ager (Elijah Wood) credited with spotting the comet agonizes over leaving his girlfriend (Leelee Sobieski) and her family or joining his parents in an official -- and tightly rationed -- underground shelter.
Meanwhile, the youthful space crew (Ron Eldard, Mary McCormack, Jon Favreau, Blair Underwood) led by gritty veteran Robert Duvall cope with the failure of their effort to blast the comet to smithereens.
Director Mimi Leder, working from a script by Michael Tolkin and Bruce Joel Rubin, develops some wonderfully emotional scenes, particularly those involving Jenny and her divorced parents. The astronauts provide both bravado and pathos, and the teen-agers comport themselves with rare dignity.
The problem is that the movie cobbles together the multiple moods and story lines into an ungainly structure that never quite gathers much forward momentum. Not that suspense is the only quality a movie needs; but when a zillion tons of extinction are barreling out of the sky, I'd say some tension is in order.
The story also packs in so many people, events and changes of scenery that key characters get short shrift. For instance, Mr. Freeman shows his impeccable skill in a keenly nuanced showdown with Jenny after she has stumbled onto a clue to the then-secret comet crisis. But from then on, he is used chiefly as a narrator, explaining the genesis of comets and summarizing history in front of a television camera.
Despite such flaws, Deep Impact is worth seeing as a decent first step on the road to a more mature crop of high-style action movies.
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