Force Of Impact (Deadly Skies)
In Washington D.C., an astronomer named Madison Taylor who works for the privately run Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Agency spots an asteroid on a collision cause to Earth. After which another investigation later determines there is actually a Texas-sized asteroid hiding behind it and it will hit the earth in 24 hours.
Madison attempts to warn the government program called Project Safe Skies concerning the meteor which has the potential of wiping human existence but her warnings and evidence are met with mockery by General Dutton. She moves over to Richard Donovan who is an ex-air force major who first invented a super laser for the purpose of redirecting asteroids and meteorites but had resigned from the project due to Duttons plans of militarizing it. They come up with a strategy to raid the Fort Kirk Air Force Base where the laser is situated and use it to divert the path of the asteroid.
Sam Irvin is your A-budget filmmaker. Guilty as charged is his first film directorial venture which is a genre film with a plot about a judge turned vigilante who builds a secret electric chair. From there, Irvin went on to making a couple of Charles and Albert Band’s production works: Oblivion (1994), Magic Island (1995), Oblivion 2: Backlash (1996) as well as shoot the thriller Roses Are Dead/Eyes Of A Stranger (1993) and Elvira’s Haunted Hills (2001).
He has also acted as producer of When Time Expires (1997), Gods and Monsters (1998), Mating Habits of the Earthbound Human (1998), Bolt Neck/Big Monster on Campus (1999) as well as Ancient Evil: Scream of The Mummy (2000).
Deadly Skies/Force of Impact can be accurately described as a disaster movie. The disaster movie was a genre that started in the 1970’s with the pattern of massive colossal structures being built, subsequently being destroyed with a huge cast of diverse characters experiencing dramatic events, as they made their way through the wreckage. By the beginning of the 21st century, this had shifted to a series of low-budget knock-offs made for the video, dvd and cable markets. (I have an essay on the genre here at Disaster Movies).
Deadly Skies/Force of Impact is a film with a very gentle approach and is quite moderate in its production. It is so inexpensive that we don’t even get to see any scenes of disaster. Similar movies, for example, Meteor in 1979, Armageddon in 1998, Deep Impact in 98 and Greenland in 2020 have a lot of scenes with mass destruction as meteors or asteroids strike various places and people try to mitigate the impact or look for refuge. In comparison, this only has a few asteroid impact shots and mostly a plot where the heroes apply themselves in robbing an Air force base to turn on the laser shield. This is more of a heist movie than a disaster film, which it has been marketed as.
Not to mention the improbability of the premise, like how is it possible that these astronomers fail to detect a giant meteor barely the size of Texas on a collision course with Earth until 24 hours before it strikes. Most orbiting astral bodies of any decent size have their trajectories mapped out years in advance so this asteroid would have to be painted black or have zero mass to not be detectable.
Antonio Sabato Jr. is a Mexican man who was formerly a male model and has built much of his career around being known for various Sexiest Man Alive lists. He sure never appears to be was even close able to convincingly portray the role of a proper scientist willing to practice nor that he stands for the technical language he parries.
Rae Dawson Chong has always been a deserving performer regardless of what material she is acting in. Most entertaining is Michael Moriarty’s portrayal of the plotting general a role that is actually developed and provided more layers than usually seen from the Sinister Military types presented in these films- into which Moriarty brings a rather dry humor to all his lines.
One of the mysterious plot lines of the film is that it seems to have two different versions one that has a cut owing to a strong LGBT factor and another that has all reference to such cut out. I, unfortunately, ended up watching the latter without knowing that two versions existed. The edited version is such that it made me question if ever there was a gay version of the film or whether it was all an extravagant fantasy of some crazed fan of Antonio Sabato Jr.
In this version, Sabato kisses Rae Dawn Chong while they are in the car and says it is “really nice” while later in the last scene she shows up in his house where he lets her in which implies there is a kind of intimacy between the two. It is from this, hard to imagine a gay version of the film.
Moving on, It is not too great a leap of faith, because Sam Irwin is a gay director, to believe that such a thing is possible. With a little bit of google fu I found reviews of the film on gay sites where it is stated that Sabato’s character lives with Michael Boisvert there is even apparently a scene that makes it explicit where Sabato gets up out bed, naked, with Boisvert which would seem to confirm such.
So that’s a bizarre scenario to black about these issues especially in 2022 and the film is rooted at a time when gay characters in films faced no resistance to being popularly accepted the film becomes so edited that Sabato’s sexuality can differ from one version to another without a doubt.
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