This could have been so very much better had director Mimi Leder focussed on creating either a decent science fiction film or an extinction event family drama, rather than this messy hybrid with too many slushy emotional sub plots. Téa Leoni is a television journalist assigned to investigate the resignation of a senior US Government official (James Cromwell) during which she discovers that a comet discovered a year earlier is on a collision course with Earth. President Morgan Freeman convinces her to hold off on broadcasting the story whilst they finalise their contingency plan - a joint Russo-American space craft called the "Messiah" charged with a mission to divert this monstrous chunk of rock from it's path of destruction. Robert Duvall manages to conjure up some sort of gravitas as the navigator of the ship but otherwise a good cast - on paper - including Maximillian Schell, Jon Favreau, a very young Dougray Scott and Vanessa Redgrave as her mother, all really fail to make any, well, impact! The effects are quite good but I'll bet they prayed they only had to shoot the finals scenes once!

Not your typical disaster movie. In my mind this was far better than Armageddon, which came out about the same time. Instead focusing on chaos and selfishness this movie gave us a positive portrayal of people dealing with an unthinkable tragedy. I found it to be realistic and hopeful. People helped each other and sacrificed for others, even in some cases people they didn't even like. There was the expected upbeat ending with a President rallying the people, but I really got the feeling that these people had been through something that showed what they were made of and they liked what they saw. I know I did.