The Blind Side Movie Review

I dropped in to see The Blind Side last night, and was very pleasantly surprised. I was a big fan of Michael Lewis's book but had been skeptical of its adaptability and the way the movie had been marketed. The book spent more time exploring the history of football over the last twenty years, and the movie (perhaps wisely) cut most of that.

The Blind Side is a genuine tearjerker. Usually, that term is thrown around pejoratively, insinuating that a movie has left the audience with an exploited, used feeling. But some movies come by their sentiment honestly, and The Blind Side is just such a movie. It is not simply a sad story because Michael Oher is abandoned or because he comes from a bad neighborhood. It's an emotionally complicated story, ruminating on guilt, violence, resentment, race, and gender. Like the book, it falls apart about three-quarters of the way through: it doesn't have the neat symmetry of fiction, after all.

The casting is good, though I only dimly understand why Quinton Aaron was chosen for the role of Michael Oher. Oher himself does not have the doughy innocent features of Aaron, and I can only guess that he was chosen because he doesn't convey a smidgin of violence at all. (At Ole Miss, Oher did get into some trouble off the field.)

John Lee Hancock, the film's screenwriter and director, deserves the credit though. Oddly enough, I watched A Perfect World (a movie he wrote and Clint Eastwood directed) the night before. I was struck by its genuine emotional weight, too, and it's clearly the better movie. With both screenplays, Hancock explores the relationship between adults and children and the violence meted out by both. I think he deserves a lot more attention than he's gotten so far.