With Deep Impact (1998), you have another example of one of those movies you see once, forget about for years, and then it turns up somewhere and you say to yourself, “Oh yeah, that exists.”  It seems standard procedure to me, anyway. In other words, I would not say this film had a . . . deep impact.  Okay, I am sorry.  Nonetheless, I came across it while scrolling through Amazon Prime and paused to read the synopsis, even though I remember well enough its content.  What got me to choose it was its description of the characters having to face the certainty of their deaths.  For a Catholic film reviewer, this is intriguing given the time of year.  Though it is something you should ponder more often, November is set aside as a time when we remember those who went to God before us.  They may not have perished in the same ways depicted here, but they all had to face their demise.  No matter if it came on suddenly in their sleep, or it was stretched out over a period of time, there is some point at which we know we are going to die.  I think this is why people are attracted to these disaster flicks because we are curious as to how we would react in the face of such travails.  I pray that we never do, but it does raise some important questions about Faith that are touched on in the film.

Before there is a Deep Impact, Leo Biederman (Elijah Wood) and his girlfriend, Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski), are with their high school (I guess?) science class.  You might picture a classroom full of beakers and Bunsen burners, but they are outside at night with telescopes observing the stars.  It is Leo that identifies a comet, which Sarah mistakes as a star, but their teacher sends to local astronomer Marcus Wolf (Charles Martin Smith) for definitive identification.  Not only does Marcus positively label it a comet, but he notices that its current trajectory has it hitting the Earth.  Before he can get word to the proper authorities, he dies in a car crash while frantically speeding to get out the warning.  This does not seem to matter, however, because a year later a reporter for MSNBC, Jenny Lerner (Téa Leoni), begins to learn that the government knows something about this space object.  However, she does not know its nature.  For the moment, she believes she is looking into a high level, extra-marital government affair involving the Secretary of the Treasury, Alan Rittenhouse (James Cromwell).  Yet, after a brief but tense, off-camera conversation with the cabinet official, Jenny is forcefully escorted into the presence of President Tom Beck (Morgan Freeman).  In the basement kitchen of a Washington, D.C., hotel, she learns that “Ellie” is not a mistress.  She is asked to give the government two days to reveal the truth to the world, which comes with some exclusivity rights that will help her career.  In the meantime, she does some research on derivations of “Ellie” and finds “ELE,” which stands for extinction level event.  In other words, something awful is about to happen.  At the appointed time, the president addresses the nation, and the world, when he informs them about a meteor the size of Manhattan that is on a collision course for the Earth.  There is some hope, however.  Because they knew about this space rock for some time, they have been able to prepare countermeasures.  In cooperation with Russia, a collaborative effort has produced the Messiah.  Hey, this is not wishful thinking on this Catholic’s part.  It is literally what it is called.  Its crew is to intercept the comet, implant it with nuclear bombs, pull the trigger, and obliterate it before it can do any damage.  This all goes mostly according to plan, aside from losing one crewmember and others sustaining injuries, up until it is time to commence the explosion.  The detonations occur, but instead of turning the meteor into space dust, it breaks into two chunks.  One is smaller, but both are deadly and on a track to hit our planet.  President Beck, though sobered, has a plan for this, too.  In Missouri, the government has built underground facilities big enough to keep a million people alive for the next two years, which they determine will be long enough to let the atmospheric effects of the, er, deep impact to recede.  Oh yeah, and it is called, probably unsurprisingly, the ARK.  The filmmakers really went for the Biblical comparisons when you see two of every animal being brought to the bunker gates, but I digress.  Leo’s family are chosen to be among those survivors because, at least according to Leo, it is a reward for having discovered the comet.  However, he does not want to leave behind Jenny, so they decide to get married.  Still, at the appointed hour, she will not go without her parents.  What can I say?  Teenagers.  Meanwhile, as the day of destruction approaches, the crew of the Messiah, have not been floating idly in zero gravity.  Their pilot, veteran astronaut, Captain Spurgeon “Fish” Tanner (Robert Duvall), comes up with a plan to use their remaining nuclear devices to take care of the larger of the two fragments.  While this proves successful, at the cost of their lives, it happens without the rest of the world being aware of its implementation, only because it takes place just before landfall.  I mention this because Jenny allows one of her co-workers, who has a toddler, to take her place in the ARK while she goes to the beach to spend her last moments with her estranged father, Jason Lerner (Maximilian Schell).  As for Leo, he decides to go back for his wife, finding her minutes before the strike of the baby meteor, which produces a massive tidal wave in the Atlantic Ocean.  Together, they make it to the top of a mountain and survive the Biblical flood.  The final scene is of President Beck standing on the steps of the ruined Capitol building and proclaiming that they will rebuild.

I do not think my fears while watching Deep Impact were unjustified regarding the name of the spaceship, the Messiah.  We are dealing with Hollywood, and a large cast of entrenched actors that, if nothing else, should have made for a better movie.  Some of what you see is comically bad, but at least there is no line that says Jesus cannot save.  Never would there be a more untrue statement.  At the same time, I was sufficiently impressed that they depicted a president willing to pray on camera.  Getting back to what I said in the introduction, President Beck has to make decisions that will lead to many millions of people dying.  It is not a responsibility he takes lightly.  There is also nothing he can do about it outside of what he does try.  One can argue with the film’s content from a scientific point of view, but such would be a fruitless endeavor not only because there is no changing the movie, but also because it is kind of silly.  For instance, the president says that the wall of water will be a hundred feet high from the little comet’s impact.  If this is the case, then the buildings of New York City are a lot shorter than I recall.  Regardless, you are dealing with a lot of destruction that takes a great deal of courage to face.  This is why the prayer he offers in his last address is important.  Only with God at your side can you face such trials.  It is like the old saying about soldiers in battle: there are no atheists in the foxhole.  Beyond this, President Beck says something even more crucial to understand.  He mentions how God does things sometimes that we do not like or understand.  It is unfortunate, and, sadly, it too often leads to people turning away from faith.  Yet, God hears our prayers, as President Beck reminds us.  The second half of this is that He always answers them, just not always in a way we expect.  This can be found in the outcomes for almost any character in the film.

As I said in the last paragraph, there are aspects of Deep Impact that are silly.  It was not the most positively reviewed movie when it premiered, and this opinion is not changed in my more recent viewing.  All the same, there are some powerful lessons and moments in it that can be revealing to how we approach the end of our own life.  I am not sure this is a reason to watch it, but it is still interesting.