Emma is a girl in her 20s who has been blind for 20 years.A new type of eye operation partially restores her sight, but she is having problems: sometimes she doesn't "remember" what she's seen until later.One night she is awakened by a commotion upstairs. Peering out of her door, she sees a shadowy figure descending the stairs.Convinced that her neighbour has been murdered, she approaches the police, only to find that she is unsure if it was just her new eyes playing tricks on her....It's not a surprise that this didn't make much of an impact when released. These sort of thrillers were released every other month in the nineties, bu the inclusion of eye surgery is surely a novelty.It is, but thats where all the novel ideas end.We have Aiden Quinn, the lead detective, and guess who he ends up with?Stowe has a guide dog, guess what happens to it? And so on and so on.There is a little bit of a twist come the end, but it doesn't really matter, all the blanks are filled in and it doesn't really bother the grey matter.Stowe is good in her role, and it has to be her best performance, its a shame she never really picked up better scripts, could she really has screen presence.See it if you like thrillers, you don't expect to be surprised too much...

Blink is directed by Michael Apted and written by Dana Stevens. It stars Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, James Remar, Paul Dillon, Peter Friedman, Bruce A. Young and Laurie Metcalfe. Music is by Brad Fiedel and cinematography by Dante Spinotti. Story sees Stowe as Emma Brody, who after being blind for 20 years receives a double cornea transplant that mostly restores her sight. However, she's subject to something known as "retroactive vision" which means that what her blurry vision at first sees doesn't register to the brain sometime later. A problem, now, because there has been a murder committed upstairs at her apartment complex and she's the only "eye" witness to the murderer.It's all set up to be a standard woman in peril thriller, the kind that drops into the cinema on a yearly basis. But thanks to some technical smarts and a terrific performance by Stowe, Blink is one of the better films from this particular sub-genre. It's a bit saggy in the middle, where, probably thanks to the success of Basic Instint and Sea of Love in the five years previously, Apted and co try to turn it into an "erotic" thriller as Stowe and Quinn's surly copper form a relationship, but it's genuinely tense and the novelty of Emma's unusual affliction never wears thin.Apted and his team have devised a unique visual effect that lets us see the world through Emma's unusual eyes, and the result is very unsettling. Blurry focus blends with wobbly vision and this allows for scary moments that stretch the concept across the films running time. It's of course a hokey premise, and the formula at the core of the plot is nothing new, but the character of Emma, coupled with her "affliction" is. Emma is no poor victim looking for sympathy, she's spunky, sexy and not suffering fools gladly. She lives as an independent, plays fiddle in a Celtic rock band (The Drovers playing themselves) and is full of feminine whiles. Stowe really gets to grips with the character and convinces fully. Quinn is OK, plays sarcastic and moody with ease, while Apted has a keen eye for the Chicago locale and Spinotti's photography is gorgeous in colour tones.It needed a better, more frantic, ending, and that over played mid-section stops it from being from the top draw of thrillers, but otherwise it's well worth a look for potential first time viewers. 7/10

DVDs are wonderful things. Picking up this one recently gives me an opportunity to review yet another favorite from way back when.Madeleine Stowe features as Emma Brody, a gifted violinist living in Chicago, who was blinded as a young girl by her abusive mother. The story proper opens with her receiving corneal transplants after 20 or so years of blindness. This restores her sight, but her mind is so overwhelmed by the resulting flood of images that it operates a kind of delay in its processing so that she only perceives certain things some time after actually seeing them. One of the images so processed is that of a possible murderer…I have no idea whether this phenomenon is actually possible medically, but I didn't care much. The story is otherwise rather conventional, though its treatment is vivid. British-born Michael Apted knows his stuff and conveys a startling impression of Emma's situation and the Chicago she lives in.Stowe turns in a convincing, if sometimes rather shrill, performance, while Aidan Quinn is also good as the detective more or less in charge of the case, with whom Emma has a romance of sorts. The supporting players, including the excellent James Remar, are effective. I must admit though that the expression "red shirt" crossed my mind when a not very bright uniformed officer (named Crowe and played by Matt Roth) was assigned to keep an eye on Emma. My suspicions were more than justified.A satisfying thriller nevertheless – adequate plot, excellent playing, good music, and lively direction. Who could want more?Rating: 7/10.

There was no 'story box' in this film, but there certainly was a mystery - a mystery surrounding who was the killer. But not just that, but was there a killer. And the main witness was a woman who's vision wasn't great and was a new recipient of a cornea transplant.Throughout the viewer has to question whether there actually is a killer. You might suspect the doctor for good reason. Maybe one of the cops as well. The writers certainly keeps you in long enough to discover who the killer is and if the formerly blind woman actually saw him or her.Overall, its a fairly good movie. Not too thrilling, but enough to watch again someday. "B-"