METEOR

During the summer of 1998 America came under the assault of two movies with the same plot. It wasn't’t the first time such a thing has happened (it happened the year before in fact) but it was the first time that a disaster movie was made in which the disaster was a giant rock hurtling perilously towards the earth.

Since I posses apsolutly no interest in falling rock movies I saw nether of these  movies in the theater. Instead I waited until they where available on tape I do however have cable so I was able to cash this old from the decade of bad clothes, disco, and a superhero Godzilla.

For those of you who did see Deep Impact or Armageddon then Meteor won't be much of a surprise to you. It could be considered an amalgam of both movies, except for the fact that it was made 19 years ago.

The story begins as Dr. Paul Bradley (Sean Connery, looking like an old James Bond) who is pulled of his boat and taken to the Kennedy (here the Linden Johnson) space center. There he learns that, two days before the movie takes place, a comet struck an asteroid at the center of the asteroid belt that surrounds our solar system. What’s left of the asteroid, named Orpheus for reasons unknown, is 5 miles wide, headed towards earth, and will hit us in 6 days unless the government finds some way to stop it.

What is a world to do? Will the send astronauts up into space to plant a bomb on the asteroids service? Will they send a bunch of rowdy Texan oil drillers to drill a hole through it and then plant a nuke. NO! In this movie humanity got smart and actually build a counter measure in case something like this happened. Two of them in fact. The USA, and Dr. Bradley, built a satellite called Hercules that carries 14 one megaton bombs. The USSR (this is 1979, after all) built a satellite called Peter the Great that carries about the same number. Together, with the nukes from both satellites, the planet earth can save itself from destruction by just shooting the ‘roid out of the sky.

Unfortunatly, Bradley has to argue that case with Washington bureaucrats (Hercules is a black ops project so no one wants to admit it even exists, much less use it), his counter part in Russia, Dr. Alexei Dubov, and get everything ready before the ‘roid opens up a 150 mile wide crater in the earth's surface.

And did I mention the several small asteroids that proceed the big one? They crash into the earth too. And in the process Hong Kong, New York, and part of the Swiss Alps are wiped off the map.

Let me say right now that the movie isn’t as exciting as it sounds. There are a lot of scenes where people stand around and talk about the asteroid, far more then there are of actual destruction. And I think it would have been a little nicer if we had actually gotten to know some of the people in the cites that where destroyed. As it stands the destruction dosen’t inspire much feeling for the people that where killed, instead it inspires you to go "Cool special effects."

Even with our main characters there isn’t much in the way of character development. At the end of the movie all of these people get into a life threatening situation (like I’m gonna tell you what it is) but instead of being tense the scene is actually boring because you don’t care about the people who are about to die.

Granted, this movie is suppose to take place in the space of 6 days. Not a lot can happen in terms of character development in 6 days. Still it would have been nice is Sean Connery could have showed some emotion other then cynicalness.

But the pluses out weight the negatives. One of those pluses is the script. Tightly written and damn good Stanley Mann should still get a pat on the back for it. While it doesn’t go far in the way of chracter development it does have some damn good lines and some interesting characters along the way.

Also something to look for is the appearance of Henry Fonda (and old Henry Fonda) as the President of the US. He adds some real depth to his role, even if he only gets about 5 minuets of actual screen time. Shows you what a good actor he is.

In the end Meteor is a good movie. Nothing special, but good. I just hope that Deep Impact can live up to this (I know Armageddon didn't) Though without Sean Connery that’s gonna be tough.

RATING(OUT OF A POSSIBLE FIVE)

NOT BAD AT ALL.

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