Blind Fury
Cheesy action movies and the decade of the 1980s go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly and this release at the end of said decade in 1989 wasted little time in staking its claim as perhaps the cheesiest of them all, an epic tale of a blind swordsman and Vietnam vet taking on bad guys who all have 20/20 vision but not the almost supernatural powers of hearing to properly combat a warrior of such acumen. Admittedly, there was some precedence to all of this as the film is an American update / rehash of the legendary Japanese movie character Zatoichi, himself a blind samurai who used his power of hearing perception to slice and dice his way through scores of movie adventures much to the delight of Japanese audiences and those from our side of the world with a taste and appreciation for foreign cinema. At least they got the casting of the lead role right in one Rutger Hauer, forever a legend for his haunting performance as replicant Roy Batty in Blade Runner and a perennial for much of his career in both heroic and outright bad guy roles but also somebody who can bring the necessary gravitas like few others of his time could in making us somewhat believe in the small germ of credibility that this concept would entail. Hauer is portrayed as a Vietnam veteran who was blinded in a severe mortar attack and then held as a POW for several years after, although for reasons unstated the Vietanamese villagers that are holding him were nice enough to teach the now blind American soldier all the intricacies of swordplay and how to defend oneself while doing so. Finally returning to The States (after having initially been declared Killed In Action), Hauer seeks to find his former best friend in the platoon (Terry OâQuinn) who had turned tail and ran out on him like a coward during that fateful attack with the intention of making peace and forgiving him for doing so, only to arrive at his home in Miami and finding his ex wife (Meg Foster) and son (perennial 80s kid actor Brandon Call), learning that OâQuinn has now started a new life in glamorous Reno, Nevada. Unfortunately, he has run afoul of a casino owning druglord there (played by perennial redneck bad guy Noble Willingham) who wants to use OâQuinnâs skills as a chemist to manufacture some high powered meth for an important drug deal that he has coming up (presumably to take his ownself out of some life threatening debt) and in order to get the right leverage for OâQuinn to cooperate, he sends an army of maybe the most motley group of hillbilly redneck henchmen in movie history (led by Randall âTexâ Cobb) to kidnap the son with the help of a couple of dirty Miami cops who haplessly look on as Cobb brazenly shotguns Fosterâs ex wife and mother to death before running head on into Hauer and his expert swordsmanship. Grabbing the kid and beating a hasty retreat, Hauer endeavors to venture out to Reno himself so that he can both reconcile with his old friend and reunite him with his estranged son even while the hillbilly rednecks continue the hunt to gain their boss his desperately needed leverage. If the whole thing sounds ridiculous on paper, thatâs because it is (the brutal shotgunning of the boyâs mother by Cobb shows just how stupid he is as a bad guy since he has just unnecessarily taken out at least half of that needed leverage), but at least Hauer brings his acting skills into play with the quieter scenes, particularly the ones that see him bonding with the boy on their trek across the country to find his dad. Once in Reno, they hook up with OâQuinnâs new girlfriend (Lisa Blount) who at first seems to be strictly in cahoots with the bad guys but soon proves her worth as a sympathetic figure. We also get to see Hauerâs blind man drive a car through Reno traffic (with the kid telling him which way to go) and starting a fight in a local casino when he reveals the roulette table as being rigged in order to favor the house, but when he finally hooks back up with OâQuinn (whose specialty in Nam was building bombs), the two team up to stage a siege on Willinghamâs compound, seamlessly taking on all of his henchmen (who lose all of their probable advantage when the lights are turned out) all while Willinghamâs potential drug buyers stand by idly with their arms crossed, clearly annoyed by all of the delays. Then, after an exasperated Willingham blubbers to his people to get him Bruce Lee as a henchman only to be told that Lee is dead, he manages to get the next best thing: Sho Kosugi, the legendary Ninja action star and swordsman, emerging from out of nowhere to face Hauer in an extended swordfight even as Willinghamâs main villain is not even given a proper sendoff himself that a bad guy of his stature deserves. All of this gets pretty far into over the top B movie territory so expectations should be kept pretty low going into something like this as we are subjected to such sights as two henchmen redneck brothers shooting each other to death (one accidental, one on purpose) after failing to connect with a clean shot on Hauer and Cobbâs especially vicious dirty work specialist being made out to be the âindestructibleâ one of the bunch mostly because he survives one sword attack by wearing a bulletproof vest. Through all of this nuttiness Hauer manages to retain an almost serene air about him, never allowing his own acting to go too far over the top even as the script sets records for just how far it will go into the realm of unbelievability for the purposes of entertaining us. And thatâs where the line must be drawn: is the lack of plausibility in the name of entertainment (or at least killing boredom) literally a virtue in and of itself? Or is watching things happen in an imaginary cinematic realm that would surely never take place in our own real world something that can cause enough stress and agitation that an effort like this would deserve the mark of Cain and as a result be rightfully buried? The answer might actually be a little bit of both as the sight of watching Hauer blindly take on armed bad guys and not only disarm them but even (in the case of one) slice off their hand at the wrist (keeping in mind that the Zatoichi films that inspired this were at least period pieces where guns were not available which means that everyone good or bad carried a sword in those movies when facing the blind hero there) can inspire some good natured giggles but expecting one to think that a blind action hero would work as an ongoing film series franchise character (most franchise action heroes possess some kind of specialized training but they can actually see as well) that oneâs basic intelligence can reasonably tolerate is asking something else entirely altogether. Yes, Rutger Hauer was a great actor with the ability to make most of his material seem much more compelling than it actually was, but the stretch of imagination put out here only goes so farâŚ
7/10