Split-second decisions in the face of a comet

By Stevie Emilia

JAKARTA (JP): What would one do if the president announced a 500-billion-ton comet was about to hit Earth and destroy all its noble beings?

Panic or pray, no doubt. But in Deep Impact, the populace tensely keep their eyes on their televisions for each new development. Panic is not portrayed as much as local viewers would expect until the later part of the movie, perhaps given the usual dose of drama here.

If there are astronomers among viewers, they'll turn green with envy when 14-year-old Leo Beiderman (Elijah Wood, Internal Affairs, Flipper) stumbles upon the comet for the first time with his small telescope during an exercise with his astronomy club at the opening of the movie.

But to make the movie a bit realistic, director Mimi Leder (The Peacemaker) then involves a real astronomer, who is responsible to make the findings known to the government.

Here, Leder introduces one of main characters in the movie: TV news researcher Jenny Lerner (Tea Leoni) who, when confronting a former cabinet secretary, thinks she is hot on the trail of a Washington sex scandal involving the mysterious "Ellie".

The shaky but ambitious Lerner is unaware that she has been given the scoop of a lifetime when she is whisked away to a secret meeting with the president of the United States of America in person.

The meeting boosts her career and she becomes a reporter and anchorwoman.

She later finds out that "Ellie" is actually E.L.E., a dangerous space mission intended to blast the comet to save the world from extinction.

Apart from the sudden change in her career, the movie tries to portray her as a mere mortal with everyday problems: the story focuses on her divorced parents and her resentment toward her father.

But she's not the only main character in the movie, the second work of director Leder after directing George Clooney in The Peacemaker.

Leder also succeeds in drawing an audience by using three-time Oscar nominee Morgan Freeman (Amistad, Kiss the Girls), who helps viewers imagine what it would be like to have an African-American for president of the superpower America.

In his limited role as President Tom Beck, Freeman mostly just delivers speeches from the movie's beginning to end.

But it is his convincing speeches that make citizens stay tuned into TV, hoping their president can convey information on what is being done to stop the Wolf-Beiderman comet from hitting Earth.

It is also his speeches, announcing that only a million citizens will be chosen by lottery to reside for two years in a fallout shelter, the Ark, to start rebuilding Earth, that make people panic hours before the comet hits Earth and start flooding the shelter.

As Beck tries to prepare his citizens for their horrible fate, former man-on-the-moon Spurgeon "Fish" Tanner (Robert Duvall, The Scarlet Letter, The Apostle) and a crew of younger astronauts are put aboard experimental spaceship Messiah for the desperate mission.

Fish and his mates have to travel in the direction of the comet, land on its surface and plant nuclear bombs, which are expected to break the comet into pieces, or at least change its path away from Earth.

But their first attempt proves unsuccessful. Instead of breaking up the comet, or changing its path from collision course with Earth, the blast breaks the comet into two pieces. And both are still headed straight for Earth.

Viewers are then presented the different reactions of people when there is little time to make decisions.

Frustrated people, who were not selected to live in the fallout shelter, start looting and burning down cities, while some choose to die in a more dignified way.

The disaster, which is about to wipe out major cities all over the world, brings people together and highlights other's close relationships to wring out enough tears from the audience.

Scenes turning viewers glassy-eyed begin with Fish reading Moby Dick to one of his injured crew before making the final decision to save Earth; and later when the astronauts bid farewell to each of their families.

And Beiderman falls in love with his classmate Sarah Hotchner (Leelee Sobieski) and then decides to marry her just to save her from the disaster, but has to let her go after she refuses to leave her parents.

The special effects in the movie, which was coproduced by Steven Spielberg, are not bad. Giant tidal waves swallowing up all of New York's skyscrapers, breaking the Statue of Liberty into pieces and wrecking the White House.

Inspired from fact -- comets frequently hit the atmosphere but most burn out before reaching Earth -- the film turns out to be more than a mere sci-fi movie.

And it's not a scientific documentary so the twists in the storyline bring no harm.