A pretty much by-the-book psycho stalker movie. Nothing remotely original here. Decent acting. Okay photography. Annoying direction. Rebecca de Mornay and Mariska Hargitay look quite nice. Ron Silver plays against type as a basically decent person. Rutger Hauer plays it sufficiently menacing and creepy. But overall, this film did nothing for me.
19 Reviews
Basicly a copy of 1992's unlawful Entry but still worth watching
craiglappe5 February 2003
Blind side is a copy off of 1992's unlawful entry. But is still worth viewing. Rutger Hauer gives his best performance since the Hitcher. It's a story about a guy who stalks a couple who just can't get rid of the stranger. Same story as the movie unlawful entry. Except the stranger in that movie was a cop. Blind side is worth viewing.
i don't know what to say
FilmCriticBoy12 February 2008
When i first saw the summary of this movie i was expecting a lot.Good HBO production.Great actors:Rutger Hauer,Rebecca De Mornay and Ron Silver.But i was wrong.This was a really painful experience.Boring,predicitable and irritating TV thriller without tension.Very poorly directed,very bad acted.I think that this is the worst movie ever made,and I am a thriller fan,but this is not a thriller,this is just a poor excuse to spend some money on making films.I can't believe that i was excited about seeing this movie.I really love Rutger Hauer,he is a great and good actor,but this movie is really a disaster.
Not a bad thriller. (spoilers)
vertigo_1427 May 2005
This is the story of a couple who own a furniture business. Heading home from surveying the future site of their plant in Mexico, they hit a Mexican policeman. Since neither look forward to the rumors surrounding life in Mexican prisons, they decide to quietly head back to California. In other words, they're guilty of hit and run. Thinking they're safe, and admitting the events only to their lawyer, they are suddenly greeted by a stranger who also claims to have arrived from Mexico (Rutger Hauer). The couple believe that he is a witness to their crime and want nothing more than to either get rid of him fast, or keep him quiet with bribes, never trying to let on too much that they know what he's referring to with the numerous hints he drops. But, the stranger has an upper hand in the situation that the couple never accounted for.
I would be reluctant to compare this film, as other viewers have, to Unlawful Entry because of one major difference: the couple themselves were guilty of a crime (to an extent) whereas the couple in Unlawful Entry had actually committed no crime that caused them to be pursued by their crazed assailant. All three main characters in Blindside (Ron Silver and Rebecca DeMornay, who play husband and wife, and Rutger Hauer, who plays the suspicious stranger) are all working around a strategy and a motive because, as is soon revealed to them all, both the couple and their exceedingly weird stranger have good reason for suspicion. The plot, too, is not immediately predictable from beginning to end as it is in Unlawful Entry, but rather, saves most of its crucial mystery until the latter part of the film when the couple must decide how to rid themselves of the stranger. Because the couple are also tainted by their hand in a crime, you are not immediately sympathetic of them, but you may also be initially suspicious upon Hauer's arrival. And, once his true motives are revealed and the crime's events finally given a clear picture, you're strategy changes as well with regards to the characters. It was done rather well.
Asside from Rutger Hauer's incredible weirdness (the synopsis on the box mentioning "bizarre sexual habits," the least of which actually contribute to his creepiness), this made-for-TV thriller may be worth renting. You can at least count on a decent cast as well as a nice constructed story that borders on the hitchcockesque kind of finale.
I would be reluctant to compare this film, as other viewers have, to Unlawful Entry because of one major difference: the couple themselves were guilty of a crime (to an extent) whereas the couple in Unlawful Entry had actually committed no crime that caused them to be pursued by their crazed assailant. All three main characters in Blindside (Ron Silver and Rebecca DeMornay, who play husband and wife, and Rutger Hauer, who plays the suspicious stranger) are all working around a strategy and a motive because, as is soon revealed to them all, both the couple and their exceedingly weird stranger have good reason for suspicion. The plot, too, is not immediately predictable from beginning to end as it is in Unlawful Entry, but rather, saves most of its crucial mystery until the latter part of the film when the couple must decide how to rid themselves of the stranger. Because the couple are also tainted by their hand in a crime, you are not immediately sympathetic of them, but you may also be initially suspicious upon Hauer's arrival. And, once his true motives are revealed and the crime's events finally given a clear picture, you're strategy changes as well with regards to the characters. It was done rather well.
Asside from Rutger Hauer's incredible weirdness (the synopsis on the box mentioning "bizarre sexual habits," the least of which actually contribute to his creepiness), this made-for-TV thriller may be worth renting. You can at least count on a decent cast as well as a nice constructed story that borders on the hitchcockesque kind of finale.
An unpleasant, insulting formula exploitation film
mysteriesfan27 April 2007
Warning: Spoilers
This was undoubtedly one of the worst movies I have ever seen. To see talented, intelligent actors like Ron Silver, Rebecca DeMornay, and Mariska Hargitay caught up in it was all the more appalling. The best that can possibly be said about the film is that DeMornay looks beautiful on screen. I cannot discuss how dismally bad a movie this is without summarizing what happens. I try to stick the main story line, without giving away certain details.
The movie begins with a "happy scene" of husband and wife Doug and Lynn Kaines (Silver, DeMornay) wrapping up a Mexican vacation, preparatory to moving their specialty furniture-making business south of the border. They head home to the U.S., driving to the border at night on a lonely, isolated road. Disaster strikes when a man staggers out of the fog in front of their car. The man bounces off of the windshield and into a ditch. After checking to see that he looks dead, with his "brains coming out of his head," the couple drives off.
There follows nothing more than a steady stream of cliché, melodramatic, and extreme ways to torment these two people. It is all done for cheap effect, without any larger purpose or meaning. It is unpleasantness for unpleasantness sake. Plot details about the killing in Mexico, which are injected at various points, seem almost beside the point.
First, there is a trumped-up scene at the border where guards become hostile and then just walk away. Next, the couple bickers, has stagey, protracted nightmares or daydreams, and generally wallows in guilt about the hit-and-run. For example, a scene with the couple behind the wheel while their vehicle goes through a car wash drags on endlessly, capped by the ugly image of a somehow still-bloody eyebrow becoming dislodged from the windshield wiper.
Then, mysterious hulking stranger Jake Shell (Rutger Hauer) arrives. He has vacant expressions and vague, clumsy speech that are supposed to be sinister but quickly become a mannered, exaggerated, annoying, and time-wasting gimmick. Shell aggressively tries to insinuate himself into their home and business by dropping hints, over and over again, that he has come up from Mexico and knows about the accident.
The couple makes tedious, pointless attempts to drive him away, such as a wasted scene with a lawyer, or to keep him close at hand. Apparently for the sheer sake of it, Shell escalates his activities to whatever sick, vicious, sadistic behavior the writers can think of next to throw in with the kitchen sink. When the couple's showroom employee Hargitay, acting like a ditzy moron, goes with Shell to his apartment on a date, he brutalizes her during exaggerated "kinky" sex, causing her to quit. Shell makes hammy, "weird" advances toward DeMornay, including surprising her in the sauna. Her pregnant character loses her baby. Silver is beaten up. In a particularly degrading scene, Shell helps himself to a videotape of the couple making love and then taunts them about it.
"Happy music" returns when it looks like Shell has accepted money to leave. Not for long. More advances, abuse, and beatings. Shell invades the Kaines' home, with a floosie in tow, trashes the house, shorts out the wiring on the sauna trying to raise the temperature to boiling hot, and forces the Kaines to listen all night to his raucous sex.
The last 15 minutes degenerates into nothing but a continuous brawl and shoot-out. Shell becomes a Frankenstein monster that nothing can stop -- not punches, not objects broken over his head, not a fall from a second-story window, not a wound to the chest, not being immolated by flames, almost not by electrocution.
In one of the worst scenes I have ever seen in any movie, Shell takes a break from the intimidation and fighting to leave the house momentarily to go to his camper-truck. He returns to the house, framed in the front doorway, lit from the back with what looks like fog all around him, dressed like a cowboy with two six-shooters, the camera often zooming in on his eye next to a bloody gash on his head. Silver and DeMornay have to stand there for humiliating reaction shots. Shell proceeds to fire all around the couple, shattering lamps and windows and setting the house ablaze. When Shell himself is consumed by flames, he goes flailing out to the sauna and dives in. This creates a chance for some final embarrassing lines from DeMornay to Shell, with Silver lying wounded nearby: "You want this?" she says, tearing off one of several layers of clothes, "You afraid of me?" Shell resumes shrieking and firing bullets, even while going into wild convulsions when the couple team up to clumsily and obviously toss an electric lamp into the sauna. Sirens blare in the background (where were the neighbors through all of this?). With the house burning down, the movie fades to the credits, as if to say all the movie leaves behind is a heap of ashes.
All of the torment, violence, and sexual content is exploited for nothing more than empty, mindless, voyeuristic shock value. The movie is not even true to its convictions in exploiting the sexual content, which makes it lame and incompetent on that level, too. There are numerous scenes with heavy-handed sexual overtones, but the only nudity (even in the so-called "Unrated" version) is a brief topless shot of the least-known actress, Tara Clatterbuck, in a frivolous scene. Nor is the movie original. It is a cheap formula rip-off of films like Cape Fear.
This movie was a tedious, trying, insulting, offensive disaster. That some reviews try to pretend otherwise is a pathetic example of just how low standards have sunk. When the only problem an otherwise breathlessly enthusiastic review sees in a movie like this is that a character calls the couple's Ford Explorer a "jeep," something is terribly wrong.
The movie begins with a "happy scene" of husband and wife Doug and Lynn Kaines (Silver, DeMornay) wrapping up a Mexican vacation, preparatory to moving their specialty furniture-making business south of the border. They head home to the U.S., driving to the border at night on a lonely, isolated road. Disaster strikes when a man staggers out of the fog in front of their car. The man bounces off of the windshield and into a ditch. After checking to see that he looks dead, with his "brains coming out of his head," the couple drives off.
There follows nothing more than a steady stream of cliché, melodramatic, and extreme ways to torment these two people. It is all done for cheap effect, without any larger purpose or meaning. It is unpleasantness for unpleasantness sake. Plot details about the killing in Mexico, which are injected at various points, seem almost beside the point.
First, there is a trumped-up scene at the border where guards become hostile and then just walk away. Next, the couple bickers, has stagey, protracted nightmares or daydreams, and generally wallows in guilt about the hit-and-run. For example, a scene with the couple behind the wheel while their vehicle goes through a car wash drags on endlessly, capped by the ugly image of a somehow still-bloody eyebrow becoming dislodged from the windshield wiper.
Then, mysterious hulking stranger Jake Shell (Rutger Hauer) arrives. He has vacant expressions and vague, clumsy speech that are supposed to be sinister but quickly become a mannered, exaggerated, annoying, and time-wasting gimmick. Shell aggressively tries to insinuate himself into their home and business by dropping hints, over and over again, that he has come up from Mexico and knows about the accident.
The couple makes tedious, pointless attempts to drive him away, such as a wasted scene with a lawyer, or to keep him close at hand. Apparently for the sheer sake of it, Shell escalates his activities to whatever sick, vicious, sadistic behavior the writers can think of next to throw in with the kitchen sink. When the couple's showroom employee Hargitay, acting like a ditzy moron, goes with Shell to his apartment on a date, he brutalizes her during exaggerated "kinky" sex, causing her to quit. Shell makes hammy, "weird" advances toward DeMornay, including surprising her in the sauna. Her pregnant character loses her baby. Silver is beaten up. In a particularly degrading scene, Shell helps himself to a videotape of the couple making love and then taunts them about it.
"Happy music" returns when it looks like Shell has accepted money to leave. Not for long. More advances, abuse, and beatings. Shell invades the Kaines' home, with a floosie in tow, trashes the house, shorts out the wiring on the sauna trying to raise the temperature to boiling hot, and forces the Kaines to listen all night to his raucous sex.
The last 15 minutes degenerates into nothing but a continuous brawl and shoot-out. Shell becomes a Frankenstein monster that nothing can stop -- not punches, not objects broken over his head, not a fall from a second-story window, not a wound to the chest, not being immolated by flames, almost not by electrocution.
In one of the worst scenes I have ever seen in any movie, Shell takes a break from the intimidation and fighting to leave the house momentarily to go to his camper-truck. He returns to the house, framed in the front doorway, lit from the back with what looks like fog all around him, dressed like a cowboy with two six-shooters, the camera often zooming in on his eye next to a bloody gash on his head. Silver and DeMornay have to stand there for humiliating reaction shots. Shell proceeds to fire all around the couple, shattering lamps and windows and setting the house ablaze. When Shell himself is consumed by flames, he goes flailing out to the sauna and dives in. This creates a chance for some final embarrassing lines from DeMornay to Shell, with Silver lying wounded nearby: "You want this?" she says, tearing off one of several layers of clothes, "You afraid of me?" Shell resumes shrieking and firing bullets, even while going into wild convulsions when the couple team up to clumsily and obviously toss an electric lamp into the sauna. Sirens blare in the background (where were the neighbors through all of this?). With the house burning down, the movie fades to the credits, as if to say all the movie leaves behind is a heap of ashes.
All of the torment, violence, and sexual content is exploited for nothing more than empty, mindless, voyeuristic shock value. The movie is not even true to its convictions in exploiting the sexual content, which makes it lame and incompetent on that level, too. There are numerous scenes with heavy-handed sexual overtones, but the only nudity (even in the so-called "Unrated" version) is a brief topless shot of the least-known actress, Tara Clatterbuck, in a frivolous scene. Nor is the movie original. It is a cheap formula rip-off of films like Cape Fear.
This movie was a tedious, trying, insulting, offensive disaster. That some reviews try to pretend otherwise is a pathetic example of just how low standards have sunk. When the only problem an otherwise breathlessly enthusiastic review sees in a movie like this is that a character calls the couple's Ford Explorer a "jeep," something is terribly wrong.
If creepy Rutger Hauer shows up your doorstep, what do you do?
dfranzen7028 February 2000
Doug and Lynn Kaines (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay), furniture tycoon-wannabes, are in Mexico scouting out a new location for their business. Driving back home, they seemingly strike and kill a man standing in the middle of the road. Frightened, they drive on home. Shortly after they get there, however, Shell (Rutger Hauer) shows up on their doorstep, claiming to have been in Mexico and to be looking for employment.
The Kaines, presented to us as everyday people (albeit with money), instantly sense that Shell knows something about the hit-and-run - or does he? They don't know for sure - not at first - but even the possibility of the hulking Hauer being able to hold something over this affluent couple is enough to spook them. Complicating matters is the fact that Lynn's pregnant.
So what would YOU do? Charming, handsome ("in an outdoorsy way," Lynn says), eager to please, Shell seems like he wants to fit in - yet he drops hints that he might have been a witness to the accident. Screenwriting being what it is today, we have a pretty good idea things will wind up in the open before too long, but not before the lives of the Kaines are completely ruined. If the lead characters were in their twenties, we'd see Shell try to do something to their parents, but since they're all grown up, Mom and Dad are out of the picture. (Which is not to say that Shell doesn't find someone close to them to harass, of course!) The story gets sillier and sillier as it goes on, but somehow the performances by all three leads keep it afloat. Hauer's doing a role he can pretty much do in his sleep, but he hasn't lost any edge off it. All in all, a fine HBO movie.
The Kaines, presented to us as everyday people (albeit with money), instantly sense that Shell knows something about the hit-and-run - or does he? They don't know for sure - not at first - but even the possibility of the hulking Hauer being able to hold something over this affluent couple is enough to spook them. Complicating matters is the fact that Lynn's pregnant.
So what would YOU do? Charming, handsome ("in an outdoorsy way," Lynn says), eager to please, Shell seems like he wants to fit in - yet he drops hints that he might have been a witness to the accident. Screenwriting being what it is today, we have a pretty good idea things will wind up in the open before too long, but not before the lives of the Kaines are completely ruined. If the lead characters were in their twenties, we'd see Shell try to do something to their parents, but since they're all grown up, Mom and Dad are out of the picture. (Which is not to say that Shell doesn't find someone close to them to harass, of course!) The story gets sillier and sillier as it goes on, but somehow the performances by all three leads keep it afloat. Hauer's doing a role he can pretty much do in his sleep, but he hasn't lost any edge off it. All in all, a fine HBO movie.
kinda like Unlawful Entry..but you know...HORRIBLE
movieman_kev1 December 2004
After Lynn and Douge Kaines (Rebecca De Mornay and Ron Silver) take part in a hit and run involving a cop think they got away clean into good old Hitcher himself, Rutger Hauer enters the picture. Way to derivate to be entertaining. Way too tedious to be engrossing and way too awful to be watchable. I'll let you in on a little secret when you have five writers on one movie, it's gonna suck. There MAY be some exceptions, but this, my dear friend, is clearly not one of those cases.
Eye Candy: both Tamara Clatterbuck and Rebecca De Mornay go topless
My Grade: D-
Where I saw it: Thriller Max
Eye Candy: both Tamara Clatterbuck and Rebecca De Mornay go topless
My Grade: D-
Where I saw it: Thriller Max
Waste of time
borg9of92356 January 2003
Another movie I watched in my Mariska Hargitay run. I highly regretted watching this. It was a waste of the $2.13 it cost to rent it. Direction was terrible. The camera angles tried to be dramatic and add to the tension, but it failed miserably and came across as the work of a child. One scene is as badly shot as the worst amatuer porn flick. Acting is acceptable, but can't overcome the hideous directing, writing, and fashion. The ending scene is laughable and cliche. After the first half hour I ended up fast forwarding through a good portion of the movie, only watching the scenes that helped to move the(pathetic) plot forward or that featured something eye-catching. Let's not even get into the plot holes and hanging threads.
Stay away from this. Zombie flicks are more enjoyable.
Stay away from this. Zombie flicks are more enjoyable.
Hauer Always Good As A Psycho
ccthemovieman-123 March 2006
This is a "sleeper," an intense and involving thriller that grabs you from the start....but a film not people know about. Hey, only 10 people have even reviewed it here and the film is 13 years old.
To be fair, I did think the finish was unrealistic which the typical killer-talks- instead-of shoots mentality, a familiar flaw in flimmaking. Too bad, because the rest of the movie is very good with Rutger Hauer a convincing evil blackmailer. Few actors play a psycho better than Hauer (see "The Hitcher" and "Nighthawks").
Rebecca DeMornay is a sexy woman in this film while her husband is the sleazy Ron Silver, but the latter's character is better than most the villains he usually portrays. This movie also has the unusual distinction of being a modern-day crime film with very little profanity.
To be fair, I did think the finish was unrealistic which the typical killer-talks- instead-of shoots mentality, a familiar flaw in flimmaking. Too bad, because the rest of the movie is very good with Rutger Hauer a convincing evil blackmailer. Few actors play a psycho better than Hauer (see "The Hitcher" and "Nighthawks").
Rebecca DeMornay is a sexy woman in this film while her husband is the sleazy Ron Silver, but the latter's character is better than most the villains he usually portrays. This movie also has the unusual distinction of being a modern-day crime film with very little profanity.
superb dialogs
ptoza8 September 2005
This film has a unique quality in the way the story is layed out before us. Imagine an optimal pace of the film and then slow it down a bit. In other films this would be a drawback because you would feel bored, but here the superb dialogs between characters create so much suspense that you will be far from bored and the slightly slower pace of the film will create a tension that you will physically experience in every muscle as you sit on the edge of your seat and watch the story unfold. This film shows us how when you feel guilty about something, everything you hear sounds like a prosecution. Otherwise this would be just one more of those nothing-special films, but the subtle insinuations in dialogs and an excellent cast led by Rutger Hauer make it a masterpiece. It feels as if everyone involved in its creation did a perfect job while at the same time being careful not to overdo it.
This is why I rated this film 10 out of 10.
This is why I rated this film 10 out of 10.
Total ART.
mr_pivac198524 February 2003
I commend anyone that was involved with the making of this movie, I am a big fan of thriller movies and this one tops the lot, Also go to see one of my favourit actors (Rutger Hauer) play one of his nastiest roles ever, And there has been alot of those roles for him. I dident even blink an eye while watching this movie. Well done to all involved in this film.
10 out of 10.
10 out of 10.
Don't be blindsided by B grade appeal in Rutger'ish film
PeterMitchell-506-5643643 January 2013
I must say, I'm actually glad I decided to watch this. I love Rutger Hauer and his movies. I don't think there's one I've ever disliked. This story is about a couple returning from one of their hot spots, oblivious to the nightmare that's waiting for em. You can only take your eyes of the road for a second, before you accidentally hit someone. We've seen this scenario many times in other movies, where the innocent culprits panic, and cover up the incident, and again here, someone was watching. What's more, the victim was a cop, and they are in Mexico. They're stopped by customs, looking for drugs or something, where they try to keep their nerves keep intact, not easy, when considering they previously doused the windscreen, free of blood, whatever. Their grill too damaged, some specks of blood still on it. Now back in town, as well as getting their grill fixed, they consult with their friend-lawyer, (Jonathan Banks-can you believe that?) what had happened, the poor sob knocked down, his brains sticking out of his skull. She is shockingly accurate in her description. What I remember, the couple (De Mornay and Silver who I liked in this) ran a successful antiques business. And guess who shows up at their door, from Mexico, no less. Rutger, a con man, wanting a job. He's great here, his best role in years, and funny too. That's almost the reason I keep watching it. Now making the couple somewhat paro, he slowly manipulates his way into their lives, giving hints and references to what happened down in Mexico. They give him a job, in the early part of his manipulation, where he literally jumps at the chance, becoming family, living in his RV. parked outside Silver's house. And you should see his R.V. Rutger keeps playing them, where they begin to suspect him more to the point of absolution, but by then he's really got em. It's like this psycho is always one step ahead. After Rutger has some rough sex with a female colleague, to the point of giving her a shiner, and he shows up with a certain cop's badge, the couple realizing they have to get rid of this guy for good. There's a great scene here, Silver truly at a loss, driven into a corner, where he absolutely loses it in his shop, after calmly threatening to kill Rutger. But there's more to this story, where the goodies have to outsmart the bad guy. Mornay's character who falls pregnant, losing the baby from stress, immediately reminded me of Pacific Heights, the same occurrence from the effect of a crazy. Blind Side is one of those straight to video thrillers that's a good pick out of the not so good bunch, It's just as good as a lot that hit the big screen, but frankly, it does have more video appeal. It plays itself well, our three players making it work, but ultimately it's Rutger's film, even if watching this love to hate villain get electrocuted, not the most pleasurable of scenes.
A hidden gem
stevenhope4 April 2020
For the Rutger Fans
austinonifc1 December 2021
Parasitic Relationship...
azathothpwiggins10 August 2020
During their return trip from Mexico, Doug and Lynn Kaines (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay) accidentally hit someone with their SUV. Realizing that the person is deceased, and not wanting to try out the Mexican legal system, the couple skedaddles north of the border... pronto!
Once home, aside from their ailing consciences, all seems well. That is, until a man named Jake Shell (Rutger Hauer) enters their lives. BLIND SIDE is a story of guilt, giving way to anger, and finally terror, as the Kaines's find themselves in increasing peril from this bizarre, unhinged stranger who just might know about their crime. Hauer's banzai, over the top, bananas performance during the finale is priceless! Watch, and be astounded!...
Once home, aside from their ailing consciences, all seems well. That is, until a man named Jake Shell (Rutger Hauer) enters their lives. BLIND SIDE is a story of guilt, giving way to anger, and finally terror, as the Kaines's find themselves in increasing peril from this bizarre, unhinged stranger who just might know about their crime. Hauer's banzai, over the top, bananas performance during the finale is priceless! Watch, and be astounded!...
Rutger Hauer is the only attraction in tedious thriller
tchelitchew12 December 2022
As a devotee of sleazy 90s thrillers, I ought to have liked "Blind Side" a lot more than I did. Rutger Hauer reprises his "Hitcher" persona, stalking an immoral yuppie couple after they flee a hit and run in Mexico. Hauer's scenery chewing excess is certainly the main attraction, but his character makes no sense. He's somehow both an evil genius and incredibly easy to manipulate, with his aims remaining totally inscrutable throughout the film.
The script is terribly weak, never generating any sense of urgency or threat in an interminable stream of fights, confrontations, aborted seductions and confusing twists. I had serious thriller fatigue by the end. The Brian May score (not *that* Brian May) is all over the place. I was particularly puzzled by the smooth jazz elevator music in the credits. Watch "Unlawful Entry" instead!
The script is terribly weak, never generating any sense of urgency or threat in an interminable stream of fights, confrontations, aborted seductions and confusing twists. I had serious thriller fatigue by the end. The Brian May score (not *that* Brian May) is all over the place. I was particularly puzzled by the smooth jazz elevator music in the credits. Watch "Unlawful Entry" instead!
Hit and run
searchanddestroy-12 January 2023
The hit and run scheme is not new at all, but it may open to many things, many developments, and many surprises. Excellent cast, excellent choice here, maybe too much, because after HITCHER seven years earlier, Ruther Hauer is nearly a cliché, who else than him, regarding of his character in Robert Harmon's feature; the nasty, disgusting, disturbing intruder, the man who is supposed to harrass the good couple, and who actually does with great talent. WHO ELSE than him? But it remains an effective thriller that Geoff Murphy has certainly made to pay his phone bills, without any conviction. You already know the end but it's not important, just enjoy.
HBO drops the ball here
Wizard-822 March 2012
Warning: Spoilers
The cable channel Home Box Office has made a name for itself by making a number of high quality movies. "Blind Side", however, is one of HBO's rare misses. You can tell that HBO doesn't seem to think it's as worthy as its other movies, because the DVD for the movie (made by them) has one of the worst looking transfers I've seen in a long time. Where did this go wrong? The actors are not at fault - they are clearly trying. It's the script that's at fault. It's not that I object to the central story being very familiar, but how it plays out. The movie moves very slowly, when there should have been snappier and the situation more tense for the protagonists much earlier in the game. And the climax involves (sigh) a punch-up instead of something more clever. However, if you want to see the ridiculous sight of Ron Silver in a sex scene, or the equally silly sight of managing to hold his own in a fist fight, this movie will do nicely.
Missed it by that much!! (Though not for a lack of shooting.)
frheins22 November 2006
Blind Side (1993)
Sometimes in life, good people under trying circumstances make grim decisions that will, no matter how many years trudge by, will never rise to the level of "excusable." In this thriller directed by "Geoff Murphy," two such people are the husband and wife duo played by "Ron Silver" and "Rebecca De Mornay," respectively. (Duh.) Soon enough, their once in a lifetime moral failing comes back to haunt and taunt them, with a horrible vengeance.
Traveling north on a deserted road, yet far south of the border, the two small time entrepreneurs on the tail end of a business cum pleasure trip slam headlong into gut wrenching tragedy; more specifically, this dark and foggy night they inadvertently run down a Mexican Policeman, who, for some unknown reason, lurches out of the brush and onto the windshield of their SUV.
Having enough decency to stop and verify the lawman is in fact beyond mortal help, the character of the husband aggressively convinces his wife that sticking around and doing the right thing might result in some serious hard time. Not a pleasant prospect, considering that the wife was behind the wheel at the time of the accident, and newly pregnant, to boot.
After a tense-ridden crossing of the border, slipping under the noses eyes of suspicious Mexican authorities, they return to their once gratifying life of making and selling pricey furniture. Once a shared calling so pleasantly normal, the love-filled duo are forced to cope as best they can (especially the wife) with their newly acquired burden of guilt. Given time, maybe, they expect the guilt will fade to a tolerable level.
Time to heal, regrettably, is cut short.
Enter "Rutger Hauer," an ominous figure who shows up at their residence looking, for of all things, a job. Tall, handsome, and flushed with an understated animal magnetism that slowly morphs into something darker and more expressive, one of the first of many cryptic and troubling things that glide past the smoothly folksy tongue and subtly smirking mouth of the stranger is that he, too, has recently come north from Mexico. And, without coming out and saying it directly, somehow, someway, he knows more about the husband and wife's grim misadventure down south than they could ever have imagined anybody, anywhere ever learning.
Let the enigmatic game of indirect intimidation, foreboding blackmail and life-shattering violence begin.
Sounds like the confection of an appetizing spine-chiller, huh? And it was, mostly.
The rub, as I experienced it, was excessiveness. Trimmed 15, maybe 20 minutes, and instead of the drawn-out drama I sort of enjoyed, I might have been treated to a top-notch taut thriller. Excessive celluloid bred redundancy. If Rutger Hauer had dropped one darksome, telling hint, he done dropped a thousand. His slyness got so overplayed, I nearly screamed at my TV "out with what you know and how you know it!" Also, those two or so beatings he administered to Ron Silver's character diminished in impact with each thrashing. Oh, back and forth their joust of machismo went. Throw in the three isolated confrontations between Rutger Hauer and Rebecca De Mornay, face-offs that held the potential for violence, sex or a combination thereof and . . . well, you know, if I saw it twice, I didn't need to see a second encore.
So much of a good thing didn't necessarily equate to a consistently good feature. Nor did it have a chance.
Anyway, "Blind Side" ultimately turned out to be a fair to good movie, carried to the finish, barely, by a clever plot line just believable enough, reinforced along the way by stellar acting.
(Besides, it certainly beat the two previous DVD's I had to suffer through courtesy of my monthly subscription: weirdo "Electric Glide in Blue," a movie that must have had some significance when it was released three decades ago, when going against the grain meant a little more than hating all things George Bush, and "Bone Daddy," a murder mystery that coincidentally starred Rutger Hauer, which, unfortunately and puzzlingly, was riddled with an illogically unfolding plot and "Bone-Headed" non sequiturs of dialogue.)
Sometimes in life, good people under trying circumstances make grim decisions that will, no matter how many years trudge by, will never rise to the level of "excusable." In this thriller directed by "Geoff Murphy," two such people are the husband and wife duo played by "Ron Silver" and "Rebecca De Mornay," respectively. (Duh.) Soon enough, their once in a lifetime moral failing comes back to haunt and taunt them, with a horrible vengeance.
Traveling north on a deserted road, yet far south of the border, the two small time entrepreneurs on the tail end of a business cum pleasure trip slam headlong into gut wrenching tragedy; more specifically, this dark and foggy night they inadvertently run down a Mexican Policeman, who, for some unknown reason, lurches out of the brush and onto the windshield of their SUV.
Having enough decency to stop and verify the lawman is in fact beyond mortal help, the character of the husband aggressively convinces his wife that sticking around and doing the right thing might result in some serious hard time. Not a pleasant prospect, considering that the wife was behind the wheel at the time of the accident, and newly pregnant, to boot.
After a tense-ridden crossing of the border, slipping under the noses eyes of suspicious Mexican authorities, they return to their once gratifying life of making and selling pricey furniture. Once a shared calling so pleasantly normal, the love-filled duo are forced to cope as best they can (especially the wife) with their newly acquired burden of guilt. Given time, maybe, they expect the guilt will fade to a tolerable level.
Time to heal, regrettably, is cut short.
Enter "Rutger Hauer," an ominous figure who shows up at their residence looking, for of all things, a job. Tall, handsome, and flushed with an understated animal magnetism that slowly morphs into something darker and more expressive, one of the first of many cryptic and troubling things that glide past the smoothly folksy tongue and subtly smirking mouth of the stranger is that he, too, has recently come north from Mexico. And, without coming out and saying it directly, somehow, someway, he knows more about the husband and wife's grim misadventure down south than they could ever have imagined anybody, anywhere ever learning.
Let the enigmatic game of indirect intimidation, foreboding blackmail and life-shattering violence begin.
Sounds like the confection of an appetizing spine-chiller, huh? And it was, mostly.
The rub, as I experienced it, was excessiveness. Trimmed 15, maybe 20 minutes, and instead of the drawn-out drama I sort of enjoyed, I might have been treated to a top-notch taut thriller. Excessive celluloid bred redundancy. If Rutger Hauer had dropped one darksome, telling hint, he done dropped a thousand. His slyness got so overplayed, I nearly screamed at my TV "out with what you know and how you know it!" Also, those two or so beatings he administered to Ron Silver's character diminished in impact with each thrashing. Oh, back and forth their joust of machismo went. Throw in the three isolated confrontations between Rutger Hauer and Rebecca De Mornay, face-offs that held the potential for violence, sex or a combination thereof and . . . well, you know, if I saw it twice, I didn't need to see a second encore.
So much of a good thing didn't necessarily equate to a consistently good feature. Nor did it have a chance.
Anyway, "Blind Side" ultimately turned out to be a fair to good movie, carried to the finish, barely, by a clever plot line just believable enough, reinforced along the way by stellar acting.
(Besides, it certainly beat the two previous DVD's I had to suffer through courtesy of my monthly subscription: weirdo "Electric Glide in Blue," a movie that must have had some significance when it was released three decades ago, when going against the grain meant a little more than hating all things George Bush, and "Bone Daddy," a murder mystery that coincidentally starred Rutger Hauer, which, unfortunately and puzzlingly, was riddled with an illogically unfolding plot and "Bone-Headed" non sequiturs of dialogue.)
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