El punto ciego

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.)

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.

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!...

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.

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.