Menace sur la Terre

Michael Moiarity at his worst Very typical, nothing new.

I see a lot of comments about the different versions of this movie, but nobody seems to mention the thing that most concerned me about this tolerable disaster film (nearly all these stories about giant asteroids menacing the earth have the same plot, more or less, but I tuned in anyway to see Rae Dawn Chong as the heroic scientist). Watching Michael Moriarty in his role as the general was distracting because he seemed to be having problems playing his part that had nothing to do with the script or the direction. He was walking with a stick, and in the dialogue scenes he seemed to stare straight ahead and deliver his lines with little or no animation. Was he ill? Had he had a stroke?

I must have seen the tame version of this film under the title Force of Impact. No gay sex, not that it would have enhanced the film for me. Not my cup of tea. I didn't have any problem with the acting, it was good from seasoned professionals. The dialog seemed average. The storyline was average. The camera work was good. But the editing left way too many dramatic pauses and too much dead air. It was not unusual for the dialog to end and then the film just hangs there while the actor stares at something or shuffles some papers. Not much in the special effects area. There was nothing really bad nor good about the film. It was just kind of there as a pay day for the people involved.

This could have been a good movie, but the acting is terrible!

On the surface, this strikes me as an oddly constructed movie. It's a stock sci-fi thriller whose hero and his friend/sidekick happen to be lovers. This fact is brought out in two bedroom scenes and is mentioned very briefly in a couple of other lines of dialog. But other than these brief, isolated moments it is never mentioned, never referred to, and it has absolutely no bearing whatever on the story as our hero battles to save the world from destruction. A standard subplot in this kind of action film is a romantic triangle of some sort, but these two lovers are in league with an extremely attractive computer jock and they never even notice him. Someday there may come a time when an action hero can be gay just because he is and it would not have any impact on the story, but we're not there yet. I'd bet good money that this movie was originally made as a standard thriller, that none of the cable services bought it, and that turning the hero gay was an afterthought accomplished by an additional day or two of shooting new footage in order to open up the gay cable network market. Whether or not the hero is in love with his buddy, the film is a decent low-budget thriller. You can see worse on the Sci-Fi Network any night of the week. Michael Moriarity is clearly having great fun as the scenery-chewing military villain and the gay moments give the producers a chance to get Antonio Sabato naked, which is never a bad thing. In short, it's definitely an enjoyable movie - just don't expect any dramatic revelations about gay action heroes.