Directed by: David Cronenberg
Starring: Christopher Walken, Brooke Adams, Martin Sheen, Herbert Zom, Tom Skerritt, Anthony Zerbe
(spoilers present)
Johnny Smith awakes from a five-year coma after an auto accident and learns he can see a person's future by touching his or her hand. Johnny doesn't want this responsibility, but finds he can't turn away from it, especially when he shakes hands with populist senatorial candidate Greg Stillson (Sheen), who Smith sees will one day be president and launch an unprovoked nuclear attack. It is here where The Dead Zone weighs whether Johnny's powers are a gift or a curse.
Johnny emerges from his coma to find his fiancee Sarah (Adams) left him to marry another man and having physical and emotional pain to contend with daily. His doctor (Lom) is sympathetic to the point that Smith entrusts him with the information that he may need to kill Stillson in order to prevent his destiny from being carried out. Sheen provides The Dead Zone with an amoral villain only interested in power who lets nothing or no one stand in his way. We see that in his dealings with a local newspaper columnist who plans to publish a scathing editorial on him.
This is one of Walken's best performances, a man whose powers haunt him and is wearing down from their moral implications. Because he can see the future, how far will he go to alter it? His doctor's response may surprise you and The Dead Zone deserves credit for following its story to a painful and not necessarily happy conclusion for its protagonist.
In our present political climate, would Stillson holding up a baby to shield him from Johnny's bullets really be the end of his political career? Would someone blame the baby? Or the parent for having the baby on the stage (at Stillson's request)? I'm being facetious...to a point.
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