The cable channel Home Box Office has made a name for itself by making a number of high quality movies. "Blind Side", however, is one of HBO's rare misses. You can tell that HBO doesn't seem to think it's as worthy as its other movies, because the DVD for the movie (made by them) has one of the worst looking transfers I've seen in a long time. Where did this go wrong? The actors are not at fault - they are clearly trying. It's the script that's at fault. It's not that I object to the central story being very familiar, but how it plays out. The movie moves very slowly, when there should have been snappier and the situation more tense for the protagonists much earlier in the game. And the climax involves (sigh) a punch-up instead of something more clever. However, if you want to see the ridiculous sight of Ron Silver in a sex scene, or the equally silly sight of managing to hold his own in a fist fight, this movie will do nicely.

This is a "sleeper," an intense and involving thriller that grabs you from the start....but a film not people know about. Hey, only 10 people have even reviewed it here and the film is 13 years old. To be fair, I did think the finish was unrealistic which the typical killer-talks- instead-of shoots mentality, a familiar flaw in flimmaking. Too bad, because the rest of the movie is very good with Rutger Hauer a convincing evil blackmailer. Few actors play a psycho better than Hauer (see "The Hitcher" and "Nighthawks"). Rebecca DeMornay is a sexy woman in this film while her husband is the sleazy Ron Silver, but the latter's character is better than most the villains he usually portrays. This movie also has the unusual distinction of being a modern-day crime film with very little profanity.

After Lynn and Douge Kaines (Rebecca De Mornay and Ron Silver) take part in a hit and run involving a cop think they got away clean into good old Hitcher himself, Rutger Hauer enters the picture. Way to derivate to be entertaining. Way too tedious to be engrossing and way too awful to be watchable. I'll let you in on a little secret when you have five writers on one movie, it's gonna suck. There MAY be some exceptions, but this, my dear friend, is clearly not one of those cases.Eye Candy: both Tamara Clatterbuck and Rebecca De Mornay go toplessMy Grade: D-Where I saw it: Thriller Max

Doug and Lynn Kaines (Ron Silver and Rebecca De Mornay), furniture tycoon-wannabes, are in Mexico scouting out a new location for their business. Driving back home, they seemingly strike and kill a man standing in the middle of the road. Frightened, they drive on home. Shortly after they get there, however, Shell (Rutger Hauer) shows up on their doorstep, claiming to have been in Mexico and to be looking for employment. The Kaines, presented to us as everyday people (albeit with money), instantly sense that Shell knows something about the hit-and-run - or does he? They don't know for sure - not at first - but even the possibility of the hulking Hauer being able to hold something over this affluent couple is enough to spook them. Complicating matters is the fact that Lynn's pregnant. So what would YOU do? Charming, handsome ("in an outdoorsy way," Lynn says), eager to please, Shell seems like he wants to fit in - yet he drops hints that he might have been a witness to the accident. Screenwriting being what it is today, we have a pretty good idea things will wind up in the open before too long, but not before the lives of the Kaines are completely ruined. If the lead characters were in their twenties, we'd see Shell try to do something to their parents, but since they're all grown up, Mom and Dad are out of the picture. (Which is not to say that Shell doesn't find someone close to them to harass, of course!) The story gets sillier and sillier as it goes on, but somehow the performances by all three leads keep it afloat. Hauer's doing a role he can pretty much do in his sleep, but he hasn't lost any edge off it. All in all, a fine HBO movie.