Bullet Points: Force of Impact

Tubi has no shortage of disaster films to choose from and the most recent one to catch my eye was 2006’s Force of Impact, due to its quality title.

There have been many a great action movie with the word FORCE in the title… Excessive Force starring Thomas Ian Griffith, The Delta Force starring Chuck Norris and Lee Marvin and Avenging Force starring Michael Dudikoff and Steve James, immediately come to mind.

The same could be said to a lesser extent about IMPACT… there was the Dirty Harry classic, Sudden Impact, starring Clint Eastwood and Double Impact starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

So if nothing else, Force of Impact passed the title test, but what about the rest?!?

• Armageddon: The movie starts off with three meteor strikes in Switzerland, the Serengeti and the Mojave Desert… these meteors are believe to be particles from a massive Texas-sized asteroid that is projected to pass by the Earth’s orbit. But the folks at the N.E.A.T.S. (That’s Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Society for those in the know) have a theory, that if true could mean total destruction for the planet! Dr. Madison Taylor (Rae Dawn Chong, Commando) and her assistant Hockstetter (Dominic Zamprogna) believe there is another asteroid directly behind the one that everyone has been tracking that will hit Earth and will do so TOMORROW night. Obviously, there’s a big time crunch here and you would think that would raise the stakes of the movie and create a sense of urgency… but it does not.
• Shot Down: Dr. Taylor races over to Project Safe Skies (Or P.S.S. for those in the know) to meet with the powers that be at P.S.S. Dr. Covington (Rob LaBelle). Covington blows her off, telling her that his team has found nothing to back up her claim and then he heads off to a meeting, but on the drive over he looks through the data that Taylor provided and realizes she is right, which prompts him to call his superior, General Dutton (Michael Moriarty, Pale Rider)… this leads to an emergency meeting with Dutton, Covington and Taylor, where Taylor suggests they get ready to fire the rumored “big laser” Project Safe Skies has been developing to blast the rogue asteroid out of the sky… Dutton thinks she is just an attention seeker and wonders why no other scientists have discovered this impending doom. Personally, I wondered where NASA was in all of this, but needless to say, the government is going to be of no help, so Taylor needs to look elsewhere for help.

• Google It: Madison Taylor remembers that a Richard Donovan (Antonio Sabato Jr, The Chaos Factor), was working on the laser at one point, having met him at a conference years ago. Taylor has Hockstetter “Google” Donovan to see what has become of him… that’s when she finds out Donovan was discharged years earlier, but they are also able to find an address on him, so Taylor hops in her car once again and pays Donovan a visit in his house in the woods… but much like the very people he used to work for, Donovan blows Taylor off. Or does he? When she gets back to N.E.A.T.S. a pizza delivery guy shows up, even though nobody ordered a pizza, which Taylor finds odd, so she buzzes him in. Inside the pizza box is a pizza AND a note from Donovan, he believes her theory and provides her a meeting place where they can discuss next steps.
• Meeting of the Minds: Taylor and Hockstetter rendezvous with Donovan, who is there with his “pizza man” friend, Lt. Mark Lewis (Michael Boisvert). Lewis is still active duty and just so happens to work on the base where the laser that can potentially save the world is housed in a silo. Obviously the foursome is not just going to be able to waltz on to the base and accessing a laser that General Dutton wouldn’t even admit existed. Taylor persuades them that they should use tranquilizer guns and not actual guns to subdue the soldiers who will no doubt be attempting to stop them. At this point, I felt like I was shot with a tranquilizer gun because NOTHING was happening. We do learn that the reason Donovan was discharged was he did not agree with General Dutton’s plans on turning the laser they were developing to keep the world safe, into a weapon.

• Laser Blast: To their credit, Donovan, Taylor, Lewis and Hockstetter manage to not only get inside the base, but get all of the personnel either outside the gates OR tranquilized… giving them the access they are going to need. But you don’t just flip a switch on a laser that is powerful enough to vaporize a giant asteroid, it takes time to power up. And that time allows General Dutton to get word that something is amiss, so he and Covington show up and with the help of the soldiers stuck on the outside looking in, get inside to be one more obstacle for our heroes to conquer before they even have a chance to attempt to save the world… I should point out that the world never even knows it needs saving, which I think hurt the movie in a major way. Panic on the streets, news reports of the world ending, people huddled in churches looking for comfort… these types of scenes would help create the sense of urgency that makes these types of movies work. Instead we got an occasional look at a CGI asteroid in the sky and a CGI laser powering up. They could have at least thrown in some more smaller meteors hitting the Earth to build up that a major shitstorm was coming.

Thinking of all the awesome movies with FORCE and IMPCAT in the title probably didn’t do Force of Impact any favors as I watched. But having seen my fair share of made for TV/direct to video disaster movies… I knew not to set the bar too high, so I didn’t. Yet, Force of Impact still came well under that bar, because NOTHING happens for long stretches.

Michael Moriarty, who should have been a big positive for the movie, ended up being a disappointment. I have enjoyed Moriarty’s work in so many other things over the years… but Force of Impact was not of them. Not sure I bought Antonio Sabato Jr. as a laser expert, but Rae Dawn Chong delivered in her role making her the default MVP in my book.

It would be a disaster if I didn’t wrap up this review with some Bonus Bullet Points…

• AKA: Force of Impact is also known as Deadly Skies.
• Alternate Version: I was surprised to find out that there was an alternate version of Force of Impact, where Richard Donovan and Mark Lewis are actually lovers and have the love making scenes to prove it. Especially since the version I saw on Tubi, teased a romantic relationship between Donovan and Taylor and ends with her popping over to his place with a bottle of wine and the two kissing before he invites her in to “pop the cork”.
• If You Ever: …wanted to see Rae Dawn Chong shoot a dude in the throat with a tranquilizer gun, then Force of Impact is the movie for you.