Blind Side

Starring:Rutger Hauer, Rebecca De Mornay, Ron Silver, Jonathan Banks, Mariska Hargitay, Tamara Clatterbuck, Jorge Cervera Jr., Josh Cruze, David Labiosa, Bill Dance, Richard L. Duran, Diana Lee Hsu, Geoffrey Rivas, Joanna Sanchez
Director: Geoff Murphy
Studio: Warner Home Video
Product Type: DVD

Description

A witness to the accidental killing of a policeman follows the young couple responsible home and begins to make impossible demands. A sexy, action-packed psycho thriller.

Customer Reviews:

An unpleasant, insulting formula exploitation film.......2007-04-28

This was without a doubt 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 to 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 and 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 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.

The movie then devotes itself to nothing more than coming up with a steady stream of cliche, 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 about the dead man's face colliding with their windshield, 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) shows up. 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 show room 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. Shell helps himself to a videotape of the couple making love and then taunts them about it.

There is another brief "happy scene," with the return of "happy music," when the two think they have persuaded Shell to go away for money. 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.

As if this were not enough, then the movie really goes over the top (or dredges below rock-bottom). The last 15 minutes degenerates into nothing but a continuous brawl and shout-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.

A sly thriller.......2005-07-16

Rutger Hauer is at his best when he plays mysterious, menacing parts, such as the character of John Ryder in the brilliant thriller, The Hitcher. His role is more subtle this time, but his character, Jake Shell, is a master at casting a web of entrapment for his victims to fly into.

Returning from their factory in Mexico, Lynn Kaine, played by the sultry Rebecca DeMornay, and husband Doug Kaine (Ron Silver) collide with a pedestrian just south of the U.S. border. It turns out this pedestrian is a Mexican policeman, who doesn't survive the collision. Lynn, who is pregnant, was driving at the time of the incident. Fearing his wife's incarceration, Doug takes the wheel and flees the scene of the collision. They make it back to the U.S. after some tense moments at a Mexican drug check-point.

Riddled with guilt, the Kaines ponder whether to report the accident. To heighten their paranoia, Jake Shell appears at their home a couple of days later, stating he's just come up from Mexico and is looking for a job at their store. But Jake is looking for a lot more than a job. He hints at his awareness of the accident in Mexico, and begins a psychological game of intimidation. Shell encroaches on every aspect of their lives, even taking up residence at their home, against their wishes.

The plot is well written and keeps Shell one step ahead of the Kaines' steps to get rid of him. Shell knows how to push all the right buttons. So, how does it end? You'll have to find out for yourself.

Best moment: The scene where Shell confronts and outsmarts the Kaines' attorney.

Funniest moment: Shell busting through the doors, wearing six-guns and looking like a fat, stoned cowboy. Also, his electrifying break-dancing at the jaccuzi. A good laugh!

Annoying moment: They kept calling the Ford Explorer a "Jeep".

DVD is fairly stripped of extras, so don't expect much, other than the film.

BAD BOY- RUTGER #1.......2004-01-08

GREAT MOVIE- RUTGER AS A BAD BOY
IS GREAT

SUSPENSEFUL AND ON THE EDGE OF YOUR
SEAT ENTERTAINMENT

SEX SCENES UNNECESSARY

Entertaining though not outstanding.......2003-09-02

The story moves forward well enough and has an element of suspense. The caliber of the acting is satisfactory plus, and the improbability and contrived sequence of events exert limits on the overall effect. Does not improve on, nor much vary, previous videos of this genre.

Terrifying Mexican Hit And Run.......2003-05-16

When California furniture entrepreneurs Doug and Lynn Kaines (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay) drive across the border to scout Mexican factory sites, they accidentally kill a policeman walking on the dark highway.

Fearing the law, they choose to do nothing until Jake Shell (Rutger Hauer) a charming but terrifying stranger, shows up at their home persistently asking for work. After each rejection, he threateningly returns until the intimidated couple tricks him into meeting at their attorney's office. It is there that Shell admits he's "on the run" and insinuates what he might have seen in Mexico, "it's amazing what you can learn just sitting by the side of the road."

The torment continues as Shell beats their receptionist in a bondage scene, Lynn loses her baby, and Doug and Shell face off in a mismatched fist fight. Eventually, Doug must search Shell's trailer to find the one piece of physical evidence that will prove the couple's innocence.

Customer Reviews:

An unpleasant, insulting formula exploitation film.......2007-04-28

A sly thriller.......2005-07-16

BAD BOY- RUTGER #1.......2004-01-08

GREAT MOVIE- RUTGER AS A BAD BOY
IS GREAT

SUSPENSEFUL AND ON THE EDGE OF YOUR
SEAT ENTERTAINMENT

SEX SCENES UNNECESSARY

Entertaining though not outstanding.......2003-09-02

Terrifying Mexican Hit And Run.......2003-05-16

Be forewarned of a perfectly-paced scene in which, driving through a car wash hearing only the rhythmic equipment, the windshield wipers suddenly dislodge a bloody eyebrow.

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