Blindside

Here is a movie that really does not know what it wants to be. The triple-crossing gangster narrative might conceivably make some kind of sense if you applied yourself to it I guess. But who cares? Whenever Harry Caul, I mean Harvey Keitel, is on screen, the movie is a brooding surveillance procedural with dark overtones of tragedy and loss; when he's not, the movie is an overdrawn melodrama bordering on farce. All the 'clever ideas' - the surveillance tape in the hi-fi store, explaining the corpse at the RIDE checkpoint, the yelling at Santa Claus - make the Keitel stuff seem even more alienated, while simultaneously making the menacing criminals look like utter buffoons. Not that Michael Rudder's lead thug needed any help; his sneering grandstand routine makes you want to avert your eyes and plug your ears. And anyway why does everyone keep conducting their highly sensitive conspiratorial dialogues at top volume in public places like shopping malls and porcelain museums? Rudder and conspirator Alan Fawcett even rent adjacent rooms, but there they go trudging out to the gas station. Everyone was clearly so awestruck at having Keitel on set that they forgot to call upon him to act; he mostly just stands there, except for one scene where he throws an inexplicable hissy fit on Lolita Davidovitch and then they go camp out in a used car for no good reason. The most unforgivable botch yet from Paul Lynch, who was handed a mismatched bunch of parts and crafted them into...a mismatched bunch of parts.

Not sure if I am talking about Harvey Keitel or the female main character in this ... well you go figure (if this is a pun or not). It is nice to see Harvey for sure. And in a role I did not really expect him in. He seems so passive in the beginning - but is there more under the surface? We will have to find out - whether we like it/him or not.

Watching people - a theme that is introduced quite neatly and almost in a subtle way to the viewers. We see Harveys character in his office ... and we see surveillance camera from outside. The camera does not linger on it - but we are more than aware of it. So we are dragged into a world - maybe we don't want to, but it is quite enticing to say the least.

A more than decent take on the thriller genre in general, the movie does have an ending that can be considered a make or break it kind of thing ... I assume many are perplexed to say the least with that ending ... not sure how you will feel about it ...

I came to this site to gain some clarity regarding the ending, which was not only abrupt, but confusing. Thus far, no satisfaction in that regard. The movie wasn't bad at all. The lead loudmouth gangster was a bit unbelievable... over the top, and seemingly miscast for the part. Keitel is a fascinating actor, although there were long stretches where his character said little or nothing at all. Lori Hallier and a young 25 year old "Lolita David" (as she was billed in this movie) were easy on the eyes. I found it odd that his motel guests didn't come to the front desk to pay their rent... he would knock on their doors and collect. And, apparently, they didn't have to pay in advance. They could even be a few weeks behind, and he wouldn't boot them out. Strange. Dark, moody, slow-paced. If I could have made some sense out of the plot twists near the end, I might have given this 7 stars.

The only blindsided thing about this film relates with everyone involved with since they failed to notice how dumb and precarious the script was while recycling many films all in one and still didn't deliver anything for us in the audience. Harvey Keitel does his best as the motel manager involved in a messy surveillance story where he secretly records his guests involved in shady businesses and a murder plan might be included. The poor man is only trying to be a hero to escape a traumatic tragedy from his past and maybe escape some boredom since he only deals with cheap clients who never pay on time.

"Blindside" is one of those flicks where the writer creates chaos and confusion in the firm belief he's bringing some innovation by messing with the minds of viewers. He fails at that because he doesn't generate interest, scene after scene is a mess where we never know for sure what's the gangsters schemes, who's folowing who and at times even who's who as there are two or three similarly faced actors you can't tell them apart. It doesn't feel like a well-constructed and seductive web, it's like a juggling act where you just keep dizzy trying to figure everything but lose interest very quickly. And by trying to be intelligent, it didn't fooled anyone.

It gets wildly cheap when it takes elements from "The Conversation" and "Blow Out" trying to look an improvoment on those due to updated technology of cameras, videos and recorders at the time, but there's nothing fascinating about this, neither about the bad guys - and there's plenty of them; and the whole exchanges between Keitel and the semi-hysterical, friendly exotic dancer played by Lolita Davidovich just serves the purpose of annoying audiences and grant a slightly interesting dance sequence of which the poor man can't enjoy completely as he's trying to figure out what he really captured on those secret audios and what he could to help the potential victim.

It's no surprise this movie is under the radar of most viewers, and we're only in it because of Harvey Keitel. He doesn't disappoint but he could do better without. It's such a mess of a movie that one can avoid the headaches of following the painful twists and turns, and the slowness of it all. 4/10.

Harvey Keitel plays Penfield Gruber, once a prominent researcher in the field of surveillance science, who has lost his status as a result of his wife's messy suicide and is to be found as owner/manager of a run-down Toronto motel (he sports a goatee and smokes a pipe apparently to convince viewers of his past when fortune smiled). A narcotics dealer pays Penfield to surveil a business rival who resides in the motel and since Gruber routinely spies upon his clientele anyway, through access of the TV monitors, his new assignment does not require much creativity; however, in the course of his observing, he discovers that a murder is being planned to occur among his tenants, other than those purveying drugs. By capturing his findings on tape, Penfield is thrust into the middle of a savage gang war, all the while becoming romantically involved with the incipient homicide target, the film sagging into a patchwork of interrelated complications and betrayals. Director Paul Lynch places emphasis upon use of closeups, helpful in this case as the work is largely shot not only at night, but during very murky night at that, and watching Keitel in turn blankly studying his video recording of his wife's death by sleeping pill overdose, potentially voyeuristic as it may seem, is actually rather mild since Keitel's reading of his part is remarkably devoid of feeling, ostensibly due to his character's history of misfortune. Shelved for nearly two years, in all probability because its storyline is consistently unfocussed, the production does benefit from capable editing by Stephen Lawrence and interesting turns from Lori Hallier as Penfield's drastically targeted lover and Lolita Davidovich as a strip teaser with a heart of gold.