Review of The Dead Zone (1983) by Ricardo C — 13 Sep 2015

A fairly well-paced film and definitely a very mainstream take for usual body-horror director David Cronenberg, Dead Zone tells its story of a man with the gift of second sight well enough, but it does seem there are simply too many storylines here for us to care enough about any one of them, one coming directly after the other, tries to give us characters to care about when it simply can't. There is a middle story featuring Tom Skerrit as a cop who's after a criminal, and though this gives us just one example of the protagonist's power, the entire story could simply have been cut out as it has no effect on any of the previous or later story whatsoever. The substory to the final storyline featuring Walken's character befriending a boy as a teacher attempts to build a relationship but again, this isn't around nearly long enough for us to buy it. Once the boy is out of the picture the final "mission" for Walken is to stop a power hungry corrupt politician played by Martin Sheen. While it all ends with enough excitement, this should have been the main story all the way through. Why this script comes across as more than an anthology of stories as opposed to one centralized one really keeps this from being something more memorable.

Everyone's, especially Walken's performances are very good, and the directorial work is fine, but to just be one mission by Walken after another really kills the film in the characterization department. Overall good enough, but feels like a missed opportunity.