4K Blu-Ray Review: Deep Impact

The Film

I'm a big fan of disaster movies, regardless of how bad they are. Luckily, in the case of Deep Impact, this 90s vision of a world-ending cataclysm is one of the better ones.

Like Armageddon, released in the same year and dealing with the same themes in a distinctly different kind of way, Deep Impact has its own shortcomings, and it's a deeply American film in some truly terrible ways. But it's also an epic, often mesmerizing portrait of a biblical event that's played out refreshingly straight.

The setup is surprisingly pedestrian. Around the world, scientists spot something in the night sky that isn't there. Through happenstance and tragedy, the warning of impending disaster gets where it's going, though the messengers are lost. Years later, the rest of the world catches up on the news: the end is coming, and it's coming soon.

Where Deep Impact stands out is how it approaches the reality of planet-wide devastation. Instead of big theatrics, we stick with the mundane. Our heroes are reporters, high school kids, working grunts, and a few astronauts in their twilight years. If there is a bigger picture, we don't see it. Even the president, played by Morgan Freeman, feels like a removed narrator, who only arrives to provide a chorus for the events we've just seen.

Granted, it's all very, very naive and hokey in a way that's almost charming today. After witnessing how terribly the world reacted to the COVID-19 pandemic, any belief of an organized effort to save ourselves as a species went right out the window. Considering the state of America today, it's an emotional experience to see director Mimi Leder lean hard into the Americana tropes and belief of a unified nation in her spectacle.

That said, there's a lot to love here even with all these caveats. For what it's worth, the naivety is part of the charm. This is a time capsule of a better world, and it merits preserving. The cast, including a young Elijah Wood, Tea Leoni, and Robert Duvall are all fantastic. They bring necessary gravitas to the absurdity, and I love how the film present a mosaic of different lives trying to make do with the time they've got.

The ending, as with Armageddon, is nowhere near as good as the setup, but that's a problem in general with disaster films. Until the last 20 minutes, this is a nearly perfect experience. Just because the finale doesn't quite measure up isn't a knock on the big picture at all.

Video

The updated visual presentation is classy and minimalist throughout. The best thing that can be said about it is that it looks like I remember it looking in cinemas. That's the kind of preservation we should cherish.

The HDR is fine, but I noticed that some of the black levels were a bit harsher than necessary, which often led to loss of detail. It's not a huge issue, but check out the sequence early on, where Wood and LeeLee Sobieski first spot the asteroid, or a later scene where Tea Leoni goes on air for the first time.

There's just a little bit of the fine detail that's missing in the shadows and highlights. If that kind of thing bugs you, you'll notice it. Others won't have to worry.

Audio

The TrueHD mix is the same as in my old Blu-Ray copy, but that one is nearly reference level in quality, so it's hard to complain about it.

The sound is rich and bombastic, especially in the big finale, but also lovely in subtle details like dialog, cityscapes, and in tender goodbyes. I especially appreciate the hum of the spaceship in the third act, and the desolate wind that howls in a penultimate scene on a vacant beach.

In theory, it would be nice to see what a Dolby Atmos mix could do with the material, but I doubt the improvements would be notable. This was always a classy affair, and Leder's understanding of where to push the film into grand opera and where to hold back has always served the presentation perfectly.

Extras

The Nordic release is once again robbed of extras available in other regions. They weren't plentiful to start with, but to not have any of them in a premium priced product is still a cheap move.

Overall

In terms of audiovisual fidelity, Deep Impact is a brilliant release, one that every disaster movie fan should have in their collection. It's a deeply humane and thrilling depiction of the apocalypse, and one of the few big scale films of its kind that keeps the focus squarely on the human element.

Sadly, the extras are non-existent, and that's a crying shame, as there are some good making of documentaries available online. The commentary by Mimi Leder, available on the Blu-Ray, is also a good listen, so it's a crying shame that it's entirely gone from this release. This is not how you preserve art.