Wonderful character development!

Great story, amazing characters, superb action, enthralling cinematography. Yes, this is something I am glad I spent money on.

I didn’t really have many expectations going into the movie (good or bad), but I actually really enjoyed it. I really liked the characters and the banter between them.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

While I love good sci-fi flicks this one had potential but fell flat on its face before it reach the second turn of the race. I also was a bit disappointed by this being more than a supposed network broadcast.Where the plot really falls flat is that with the second meteor and third set of meteors that they could back track to the source. Also, with the speed they are flying and reaction from the third to the fourth set of meteors would mean they weren't much further than the moon creating a major whole in story-line.The scientist trying to tie the diamonds together was also something of a childish attempt to prove alien intent that was dead on arrival. He goes over all this scientific info and then pulls a diamond image off one piece of how he is tying this to alien life behind what has happened.

The film starts off in a parallel fashion to the famous Orson Wells radio drama of 1938; opening with "ordinary programming," which is then cut in upon by a brief news bulletin that reports of meteors had struck the Earth, in three countries: France, China, and the USA. After that, this story diverges from the War of the Worlds, but bears some similarities.It was a fun idea to mix actors and actual newscasters: Sander Vanocur is the anchorman following the rapidly unfolding story, and handles the increasing level of tension in the script pretty well. Bree Walker also succeeds in blending her journalistic talent with drama. The mystery is effectively spooky, and this was, after all, like the radio play, an effort to say "Boo!" on Halloween. The interviews with people speculating on what was going on were just what you would expect if such a scenario was real. The interview with Arthur C. Clarke was intelligent, even fact-finding. The newscasters advancing on the sites of the meteor impacts was a good touch. Loud whines from the craters, burned survivors speaking in strange tongues, and the disappearance of two air force pilots: some eerily cool stuff. My favorite is the Faith, Wyoming sequence. This scene, was masterful in its simplicity. The narration by the newscaster describing the bizarre and inexplicable events there was a highlight of the sinister tone of the movie's events.The movie starts to run out of gas in the latter stages, resorting to some clichés. This may be owing to the fact it had done such an immense buildup in its realistic news cast depictions, that it had to resolve the story in the bombastic way it does. There is some dialouge that nobody would say in the context of what transpires.Even with the flaws, a good premise, skillfully executed. A fun and deliciously eerie movie.

I had high hopes for this film. The idea of a "War of the Worlds"-style fake news broadcast about an imminent asteroid impact was very intriguing. One of my favorite TV films was 1983's "Special Bulletin", which took a similar approach to the subject of nuclear terrorism.Unfortunately, this movie fails on almost all levels. The actors playing the news reporters come off like, well, actors playing news reporters. The plot points are just plain silly and melodramatic. The conclusion of the film is wretchedly insipid. In effect, the fact that humankind takes perfectly logical steps to protect ourselves from an asteroid causes super-advanced aliens to think we're too warlike for them to let us live. Or something like that.The issue of asteroid impacts is real and serious enough that we don't need television trivializing the subject with ridiculous sci-fi elements.

Before I comment on the execution of this 1994 TV movie, I'd like to say something about the unbelievably pompous sermonizing this movie does by offering this hypothetical. Suppose Captain Kirk sent an unmanned shuttle to contact a planet that had never experienced an alien contact before, and then the aliens, not having any clue what this was, then shot the shuttle down. Captain Kirk then decides this is a hostile act and decides to nuke the planet and destroy all life on it.Now if Captain Kirk did this, you'd think he was a madman and the epitomoe of all things evil. You would not as a matter of course blame the aliens for not knowing any better. So why then I ask, does this TV-movie serve up the exact same premise to us, and then deliver a scathing indictment about how this is all humanity's fault, and that our barbarism caused this, and that ultimately, as Sander Vanocur says before Washington blows up around him, "The fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves"? That kind of thinking is not merely insulting to one's intelligence, it's just plain dumb. Yet for some reason, Hollywood has long had a fascination with this incredible cliche of how aliens are always wiser than humans and that any normal reaction of fear on the part of humans constitutes barbarism making destruction by the aliens justifiable (this after all is the very premise of "The Day The Earth Stood Still").Now setting aside the dumb philosophy, how does this work in terms of execution? Only so-so. I can't believe anyone would have fallen for this in a minute since it should have occurred to them to merely change channels and then remember that the last time Sander Vanocur was a serious journalist was a long time ago. But then again, the people who listened to Orson Welles long ago never had the sense to do that either so I suppose that can be forgiven. The problem with this fake newscast is that we are served up the most shallow of cliched characters to represent the different points of view in the scientific, military and political communities and you can't take them seriously for a second. This is always the greatest problem with any "fake newscast" style of drama. They spend so much time trying to make the newscasting sound authentic that in the end they forget all about trying to make the characters themselves have the ring of authenticity.As mindless entertainment this film has its merits but for chilling authenticity in a fake newscast, try to find Buffalo radio station WKBW's 1971 update of the War Of The Worlds. THAT was a drama that knew how to push all the right buttons and come off with an air of authenticity.