Force of Impact

Dr. Madison Taylor (Rae Dawn Chong) at Near Earth Asteroid Tracking Society has discovered a hidden asteroid on course to destroy the world in a day's time. General Dutton (Michael Moriarty) at the US government's Project Safe Skies dismisses her. Her only hope is former air force Major Richard Donovan (Antonio Sabato Jr.) and an asteroid-destroying laser which might be no more than a government boondoggle.

This is Deep Impact without the explosive CGI or the reasonable characters. I like the idea of a government boondoggle and secret weapon. Everything else is less compelling and less well-written. The miniature budget does limit the production. I got bored with Chong and Sabato in a long back and forth. This is cheap TV with one interesting idea among a sea of weak writing and production.

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 I'd bet good money that this movie was originally made as a standard thriller, that none of the cable services bought it, and that turning the hero gay was an afterthought accomplished by an additional day or two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.

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

Michael Moiarity at his worst Very typical, nothing new.

This film has been released in three different countries under three different titles,and each version is slight different. In the United Kingdom,the film was released on DVD with this title,Ultimate Limit. In Canada this film was released on DVD with this title,Force of impact. In the US this film was released under the title,Deadly skies. The US version has the main hero portray as a gay man. The UK and Canadian version have these scenes edited,yet the UK version is slightly different than the Canadian version. This film,made for cable TV was not that bad. I have seen both the UK and Canadian versions. I have not seen the US version.