BEFORE: Day 3 in Lake George, NY - with no internet access, but my wife was kind enough to bring along her laptop so I could continue to watch movies, after she goes to sleep. Lake George is a beautiful town (yesterday we hit the outlet malls and went to a wine tasting, then hit the casino in Saratoga) but it's fairly deserted, which is kind of spooky. We're staying in a small cabin/cottage that's part of a motel complex - and I figured that would enhance the Stephen King experience - aren't they all set in spooky cabins, out in the woods? I know they're mostly set in Maine, not upstate NY, but the feeling could be similar.
THE PLOT: A man awakens from a coma to discover he has a psychic detective ability.
AFTER: The first few minutes of this film name-check both Edgar Allen Poe AND "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", the latter of which was set in upstate New York - Tarrytown, to be exact. And the star of this film, Christopher Walken (last seen in "Hairspray"), later had appeared in the 1999 film "Sleepy Hollow".
This movie illustrates the folly of attributing human and natural events to nebulous concepts like Luck, or the Grace of God. A man survives a car accident - is he lucky or blessed? Wouldn't it have been luckier to not be in the accident at all? A man comes out of a coma after 5 years - and people call it a miracle. So what about the coma itself, didn't God have a hand in that as well? Here a man is blessed/cursed with the ability of second sight - by touching someone's hand, he can see their future, or warn them of danger.
The best metaphor for predicting the future is seen at the beginning of the film, when Johnny Smith (Walken) rides on a roller coaster. When on a coaster, you might be able to see the general direction of the track, but you can still be surprised by each sudden curve, and you probably can't see ahead more than one turn at a time. Plus, you know your ride will end at some point, but you can't tell exactly when.
Of course, one of the great historical/time travel thought questions is - if you could travel back in time to when Hitler was a baby, would you try to kill him? This film explores that dilemma when Smith meets a charismatic politician with a dark future. He's got to decide whether assassinating this man would be better for the world - after all, why be given the ability to see the future without the power to change it? Which, in my mind, raises another interesting thought question - what if Lee Harvey Oswald shot JFK to save the world? What if he knew, for example, that Kennedy would, accidentally or on purpose, destroy the world? What if Oswald did what he did to save humanity? I'm just askin'...
Very appropriate to watch this right before the mid-term elections, too.
Also starring Martin Sheen (carrying over from last night's film), Brooke Adams (last seen in "The Great Train Robbery"), Tom Skerritt (last seen in "The Rookie"), and Herbert Lom (most famous for playing Inspector Clouseau's boss/nemesis in the "Pink Panther" films)
RATING: 5 out of 10 campaign posters
SPOOK-O-METER: 3 out of 10. A couple of gory deaths and some gunshots, but again not too many things I would associate with a horror movie.
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