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The Dead Zone

The Dead Zone

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Not all that great!
Review: The only thing this movie has going for it is that Christopher Walkin is a great actor and was perfecty cast as Johnny but the movie itself is rather flat and lifeless.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: An average movie based on a great book.
Review: I read the Dead Zone a few months ago and thought it was a great book. The movie is good and I think I would have enjoyed it a lot more if I hadn't already read the book. Their are no twists on the movie version so you know everything that is going to happen.
Christopher Walken stars as John Smith and does a good job of portraying the agony and suffering of a character that would have his abilities.
I really don't have much else to say. This movie is quite unremarkable.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Didn't Like The Movie Or The Book!
Review: When I first saw this movie I thought it was okay but not the best I saw it again and I didn't like it and was totally bored. I read the book by Stephen King which I didn't really like too much either so it's not my favorite movie or book, I preferred the books and movies The Shining and Firestarter.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Grade B for 'bowlcut'
Review: Based on Stephen King's novel, the Dead Zone is about a teacher who goes into a five-year coma following an automobile accident and emerges to discover he has psychic powers and the capability to change the future he sees.

The film delivers a solid story and acting, but there are no real scares here for me, other than Walken's bigtime bowl haircut before the accident. Once he comes out of the coma, his hair is also altered, taking on its familiar unkempt height. I had a hard time accepting his life-long distraught over his girlfriend marrying another man while he was in the coma because, frankly, she just wasn't all that. Also, there is a suicide scene in which a man somehow dies almost instantly by shoving a pair of barbershop scissors into his mouth, raising the age old anatomical query -- can you get to the brain through the roof of the mouth? I'm just not sure.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The PRINCE of KING'S Cinema translations!
Review: First-off: I'm not a fan, but acknowledge Stephen King's preeminence among horror writers. Of half-dozen horror novels I've read, my favorite is NEEDFUL THINGS, a wicked Americanization of FAUST's legend. I've more enjoyed...because of eclecticism manifested....straying-off the path with THE RUNNING MAN onto THE GREEN MILE. King could use an editor however; his books aren't sold by the pound.

THE DEAD ZONE, in my estimate, is singular as King's movie masterpiece. Characterization carries the story from tragic beginning to sad, evocative climax. Phasers-not-on-stun master, David Croenberg...SCANNERS; VIDEODROME; THE FLY... deserves plaudits for restraining usual, often grotesque flamboyance. But the show "goes" with Chistopher Walken, playing JOHNNY SMITH. The "Dead Zone" refers to a faculty of Smith's brain...jolted into function by a near fatal car crash...that makes him CLAIRVOYANT.

The excellent cast includes Brooke Adams (as "lost" sweetheart);
Herbert Lom (as psychiatric mentor); Anthony Zerbe (as concerned parent of a reclusive son...Simon Craig...whom Johnny saves from drowning; Colleen Dewhurst (as devoted mother to the town's sexual predator and serial killer);
and Martin Sheen (as Greg Stillson: would-be President of the United States who...in perverse moment of ebulience in power... will start WW III in Nero-like act of self-glorification).

A complicated plot focuses on "blessing"/curse of psychic powers on Johnny. It approaches tragedy (DZ is not a "horror" story") because Walken is superb in refusing to "melodramatize" his most unwanted "celebrity" status as "Who wants to be Psychic?" hero. He hates the "freak quality" it confers; as well as having cost TRUE LOVE.
Again, I think the book was too long; King telegraphed Johnny's heroic confrontation with the American Anti-Christ. However
the film's pacing...particularly pursuing the serial killer...jolts. All...(sometimes Sheen is overly DEMON-strative as Prime Candidate of the Demagogue Community)...actors contribute qualities of NORMALCY King as writer so magnificently exploits to HORRIFY. Perhaps THE DEAD ZONE is really our USA still(son) pretending to be NORMAL when it isn't; with "President Greg" waiting (in THE WEST WING?) to prove it. Again: this is MOVIE KING...or at least crowned PRINCE of cinema efforts...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An Underlying Mix of Emotions
Review: The Dead Zone is a masterpiece David Cronenberg can be proud of. This movie mixes so much emotions into one story; when it's over you are confused on how you feel, but you are undeniably hooked. This movie has one of the best endings in cinematic history, with some of the most powerful dialogue I've ever heard. Cristopher Walken puts on a very powerful performance. Brooke Adams plays the love interest of Walken who has moved on with her life after the accident. These two set off firecrackers wheneve they are on-screen together. Martin Sheen plays a backwards politician who is running for president. Sheen's character has a line that says "I will be president someday!" And when he said that i burst out laughing because i remembered that he plays THE PRESIDENT on "The West Wing". But aside from that you have to see this movie. Please indulge your-self in solid cinema.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: The ICE... is gonna break!
Review: I've never been a fan of Stephen King's books or movies adapted from his stories, but I have to admit I really enjoyed this film. Almost 20 years after it was released, it's still very powerful, and the reasons are multifold.

I'm a big Christopher Walken fan, and in this film, he hits every emotion available right on the nose--sympathy for his character, fear of human contact (and the lack of it), disability, weariness... he does it all splendidly, and straighter than most of his other film roles.

If that wasn't enough, check out Martin Sheen (now ironically playing the president in "The West Wing") thoroughly enjoying himself as a complete lunatic presidential candidate.

The pace of the film is it's greatest strength; it never sacrifices believeability for garishness, and ends on a fitting note, remaining as true to the book as is possible for a movie. It's suspenseful, entertaining, and most of all, fresh. Many movies since then have used elements of it, and for good reason; it's solid filmmaking.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Beautiful, haunting, devestating and compelling movie.
Review: Of all the films in my collection, I keep coming back to 'The Dead Zone' time and time again, for times when you want a romantic story, want to be shocked/scared or want a good cry - The Dead Zone does it all! Christopher Walken plays a teacher, who along with his girlfriend, played by Brooke Adams(also a teacher) is involved in a bad car crash. Walken ends up in a coma - for five years, when he eventually wakes up Brooke Adams has moved on with her life, got married and had a baby. Understandably Walken is devestated, but soon has other things on his mind when he realises, as a result of his traumatic experience, he has been given the 'gift' of second sight.

I'll say no more about the plot except to say my favourite bit of the film is when Brooke Adams says to Christopher Walken "I think we've waited long enough." And if you are an incurable romantic like me you'll see what I mean.

The Dead Zone is an excellently acted, well written and directed film that can also scare the pants off you - I'm not really a Stephen King fan but I absolutely love this film. The music by Michael Kamen also makes this film very atmospheric.

Ten out of Ten.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Stephen King for those who don't like Stephen King.
Review: Christopher Walken plays John Smith, a teacher in a small town who wakes up from a five-year coma to discover his life has passed him by. He also finds that he has somehow aquired the power to see horrifying events in the past or future of people's lives through simply a touch. For John, and us, the effect of his discovery of both his new life and his new power (blessing or curse?) is soul-shattering.

There's lots of good acting here. Brooke Adams, Tom Skerrit, Colleen Dewhurst, Herbert Lom, Anthony Zerbe and Martin Sheen is a maniacal presidential candidate (Greg Stillson). Ok, so maybe Sheen's performance seems a bit over the top, but I kinda see what they were going for. Stillson's in complete command of his abillity to manipulate events, to gain recognition for his own accomplishments (to be believed), and by doing so, garners more votes, to gain the highest office of the most powerful country in the world...unlike ego- and soul-crushed Smith who must wrestle with his moral dilemma. I don't want to give away too much, but the ending is well done and even makes you think.

Some people, in these pages, have said they've been a little reluctant to use words like "haunting" to discribe this movie, since the words are so over-used. I agree. All the superlatives I can think of, fail to underline how unusually affecting this film is. I hope more people will see it.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Genuinely haunting
Review: In my opinion, this is the best film made from a Stephen King work, but it may be too understated for its own good. I've visited many Stephen King discussion websites, and "The Dead Zone" appears surprisingly rarely in the threads about movies made from King works.

One would expect that in a film featuring Christopher Walken and Martin Sheen, Walken would play the villain and Sheen the hero. This film turns that assumption neatly on its head, and it's a wise choice, too; for all his talent and oddball appeal, Walken does not have the type of oily charisma needed for Greg Stillson, the character Sheen plays. Sheen, however, does a terrific (though at times over-the-top) job of playing a wolf-in-sheep's-clothing politician, a far cry from the saintly President Bartlett he currently plays on TV's "The West Wing."

Walken's performance as Johnny Smith (great name) is more muted--although that scene where he smashes the vase and yells "THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!" never fails to startle me--and he hits all of the right notes playing a protagonist who is atypically complex for movies, and certainly for "horror" movies (the genre this movie is generally relegated to). Smith starts out righteously wounded, then becomes withdrawn and self-pitying, and finally is faced with a Cassandra-like dilemma (he knows the dreadful future, and also that no one will believe him), but unlike Cassandra, he can do something to prevent it, even though it will mean sacrificing himself. With this knowledge, he realizes that what he'd thought was a curse was really a gift, as he himself says.

This film is also atypical for the "horror" genre in that it has more than its share of heartbreaking scenes. The scene that is most so, for me anyway, is when Smith tells Sarah (Brooke Adams, who gives another of the film's roundly excellent performances) that he wishes to be like Irving's Ichabod Crane: "And as he was a bachelor and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled their heads about him anymore."


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