Y’know…going into 1989’s Blind Fury I was a little more than apprehensive. I mean you’ve got to appreciate, an 80’s action comedy movie mainly following a blind swordmaster played by Rutger Hauer is shaky ground as a pitch. I was flashing back to movies like “Soul Man” fully expecting to be submerged into 90(ish) minutes of horrifically offensive jokes about blind people, rejected naked gun visual gags, poor choreographed action sequences and an end result that would likely have resulted in my exile from youtube and ostracization from society.

But what this film actually IS, actually kind of surprised me…

The film follows Nick, a blinded army veteran who served in Viet Nam, in the opening of the film we see Nick back in 1969 serving in the army after surviving a helicopter crash that was *presumably* supposed to be taking him and his army buddies home, after wandering through the swamps for a while completely unaware of what’s around him, he’s captured and taken to a local village, where his wounds are treated, he’s recuperated back to good health and while there, some of the villagers decide it may be interesting or entertaining to train him how to wield a sword. At first he’s an amusement for the village, they throw fruit at him and generally try to wind him up a bit. But over time his skills sharpen, he becomes much more disciplined in the art of swordsmanship, he becomes able to focus his hearing allowing for him to be much more aware of things generally around him, and after some time and training he’s able to perfectly hit anything thrown at him.

It’s from here that some time passes and we pick back up with Nick 20 years on in Miami Florida, and Nick looks like he’s loving life wandering the byways and highways avoiding dog doo and mistaking crocodiles for dogs. He heads inside a local bar where a gang are, generally being unpleasant and after some shenanigans in which they ruin Nicks Burrito with extra hot sauce when he said he wanted mild and they try to steal a ladies purse (and possibly worse) Nick illustrates that, 20 years on, the skills he learn in Nam are VERY much still present and sharp as ever.

We’re then transported to Reno Nevada where a fellow by the name of Frank Deveraux is…hanging around. Literally. He’s in debt to a local casino by a fair wodge, and the casino responded to this debt owing by casually hanging him over the side of the top floor of the casino and basically threatening to murder him (or kidnap or murder his family) if he doesnt either pay back his debt or agree to work for the casino manufacturing VERY illegal drugs, for them to sell to clear their own debts. After the intimidation, the owners of the casino mention in passing that they think Frank will be more cooperative if his family are “Taken into the care” of some of the casino’s thugs…I mean, hired staff…and they mention that the Deverauxs were last known to be based in Miami.

And wouldn’t you know it; We then INSTANTLY cut to Nick wandering up a path towards the front door of the Deverauxs. After knocking on the door Frank’s wife…or should that be Ex wife Lynn answers and when Nick explains that he and Frank were army buddies she lets him in. Nick explains that he’s traveled here to see Frank and catch up on old times. But unfortunately only a short time ago Frank and Lynn divorced and Frank moved to Reno to go and gamble. Nicks is introduced to Frank’s kid Billy, who’s…a character. I think it’s fair to say, who shows a vague interest in Nick before clearing off to go do some kid stuff.

After a bit more catching up, there’s a knock at the door and two police officers appear claiming they need to speak to Billy as they believe he witnessed a crime and they need him to go with them to provide more information. Lynns confused as Billy hasn’t mentioned anything about a crime taking place and when the questioning gets a bit TOO deep for the cops they reveal they’re 2 henchmen from the casino led by a tall creepy type called “SLAG”. Within minutes, it’s all kicking off. Bullets are flying, limbs are being lopped off and by the end, the cops are either dead or mortally injured, Slags jumped through a plate glass window and Lynn lies dead on the floor with a gunshot wound to the chest. Her dying wish being for Nick to take Billy to be with his father Frank by any means necessary.

And so, Nick and Billy begin their journey to reno and many shenanigans befall the pair along the way, including tripping over in the mud, Billy realizing what happened to his mum and running away, Slag returning for an epic showdown in a cornfield and calming exchanges of words of wisdom under the stars. Eventually; they finally arrive in Reno and they head to an apartment where Frank’s current Girlfriend “Annie” is waiting for them. Unfortunately Annies being used as bait and the minute the pair enter the apartment Nicks knocked unconscious, the pair are grabbed, and the baddies speed off back to the casino.

Luckily for the plot, Billy is able to wriggle out of the rope they’ve been bound together with and upon freeing Nick the pair beat up the henchmen and take off on a high speed chase of EPIC proportions! Resulting in two VERY injured henchmen and an extended sequence in which the three escapees wander around a field aimlessly looking for Nick’s Cane/Sword thing. Eventually; they head over to a friend of Annies called Coleen to lie low at her trailer and plan their next move. Nick informs them he’s going to the casino himself to try and stake the place out in the hopes of finding Frank.

And what follows is a final act of thrills, spills brawls and crawls as Nick fights his way through casino floor looking for his friend, unveils a secret illegal *fixed* gambling racket AND faces a final showdown with Slag, in a frankly WILD finale that I won’t spoil here for you lovely people, Will Nick find Frank in one piece?! Will the casino get it’s luuuuuuurvly druuuugs!? And Did Nick REALLY hate that extra Spicy Burrito? I mean; his initial reaction was surprise and pain, but then he kind of drops being in pain like it was all an act…and I don’t know if it was an act or not, I’m SO confused. Anyway something something something slashy slashy BLIND FURY!

And honestly; given what I’ve been through so far with this run, I was NOT expecting a lot from this. At MOST I was expecting a “passable” experience with some poor taste jokes. But; honestly? This thing’s good. Decent even!. It’s apparently a *loose* western adaptation of one of the stories of Zatoichi the blind swordsman and I could certainly feel the influence present here in terms of narrative structure.

What we have here is a script that’s textured unusually. But not an unpleasant one. It’s tristar entertainment and with studio fodder there’s kind of a preset expectation that the basics here will be of a standard and in play (even pacing, a 3 act structure, character progression and development…a point.) all that good stuff. And well; basically yeh, all that’s here, we have a decently paced 3 act narrative that follows a basic rescue plot trope from start to finish with very little deviation. It’s a solid, if not slightly generic piece that decently rumbles along without too much in the way of issues.

What gives this film a little spice, just…something to kick it up from being a generic action movie is the tonal choices they’ve gone for, and particularly in the comedy style they’ve decided to work with. Y’see; the comedy in this film is…odd. I think they were aiming for sarcastic cool humor, y’know, the type of humor where the hero can quip, do puns, maybe even give a facial reaction that suggests humor. It’s not like ACTUAL gags. More intention in actions and the way in which lines are supposed to be delivered that makes the humor work.

Unfortunately for this script 2 factors are in play in the movie that derail this. The first being that there just aren’t enough moments where that kind of comedy is utilized, meaning comedy happens enough to be “A thing” but not enough to actually make it feel natural within the script. But then also not helping things is Hauers decision to play the humor in this script as goofy and cheesy as possible. It comes across as awkward, like it’s been rammed in there rather than feeling like a natural extension of the character. I’d lean towards studio intervention on the humor in this thing quite honestly, as, from what I can gather, the film was supposed to be a quite faithful loose adaptation of zatoichi..at least initially…and I could see a contrast of lighter and darker moments working quite well there.

There’s points in this film where it gets VERY bleak very quickly, and I could see those moments tonally gelling quite well with some lighter moments. But instead the VERY bleak moments are married up to just…daft moments. Like Haurer pulling faces, prat falling or acting incredibly sarcastic. The henchmen are written almost like cartoon characters and the whole thing as a result just, feels a bit off to me. Which…ironically has probably given it the distinction it needed to break away from being pigeonholed alongside all the other middle of the road action flicks from that time. The odd humor, the strange decision to make some of the cast have completely serious performances while making others loony toons characters has resulted in something that…to me is neither good nor bad. But it IS different.

The dialogue’s also a bit all over the place too…in an enjoyable way mind! But yeah…it starts off pretty standard really for movies of this fair…maybe a couple of light hearted hints towards humor but otherwise pretty sturdy and serious with the aim of establishing our characters and goals, but as the film goes on it slowly turns into a free for all, the dialogue begins to drift into the cartoonish…I mean, for my money it never *quite* gets there, despite getting bloody close on multiple occasions. But it does seem to just stray further and further away from what the initial set up was supposed to be until the end when it snaps back to reality. It gave me a bit of tonal whiplash to go from baddies grandstanding from their abandoned ski lodge mountain top lair to a quite touching moment between Nick and Billy.

When combined with a cast who largely mumble their lines because they’re action hero’s they’re supposed to be cooler than thou…so of course they’re going to only speak through pursed lips for a decent chunk of the runtime. It creates a situation where you have to strain to hear what our characters are saying in places and when you finally do make out what’s being said it’s usually some kind of nonsense that was SUPPOSED to be delivered as a withering pun, but has instead been delivered with a cheshire cat grin and a look like Haurs frontal lobe is out to lunch. Which again! Isn’t a bad thing! It’s just VERY unusual.

To be honest, if I was being picky, i’d say the only genuine criticism I’d level at the script is the ending itself. It doesn’t so much resolve more…stops. There’s no actual closure. Nick beats up one of the main henchmen in the movie while the ACTUAL baddies, the casino owners threaten Billy with a bullet to the head. There’s an altercation and we fade to black and on fading up it’s all resolved…with ZERO explanation for how Nick stopped the casino owners, where Frank vanished to or how they got off the mountain. We just crossfade away from what is arguably the main point of the films existence. Into a totally defused ending that felt tacked on, rushed and didnt feel like it matched the rest of the tone or pacing of the rest of the film by any measure. It literally feels like there’s a scene or two missing from the final cut. Which was a bit disappointing to me when the journey had been quite enjoyable.

But otherwise what we have here is a script that’s studio grade passable and just odd enough to take it above what would be considered a passable experience for the genre. It’s not something you’d be clamoring to watch again in a hurry, but I’d absolutely watch it again in future given the chance.

The Script was written by Charles Robert Corner, he has 17 writing credits with a project currently in active development! Looking at his list there was nothing that immediately caught my eye, so I’d say this may be his best known work…though he did write “Gymkata ” and I know that thing definitely has its fans. The film was directed by Phillip Noyce. Who has 64 directing credits with several in various stages of active production as of the time of recording! He’s australian born and he had some pretty decent hitters in his resume including “The Bone Collector”, “Heatwave” and “Roots”

And on the direction front, this is just a damn fine piece of work, it’s not mesmerizing, it’s not pushing the limits of cinema. But y’know what? Noyce has managed to create an entertaining feature here that seldom had me clock watching and kept things as visually interesting as possible across the runtime. Scenes pop with a liveliness that I thought was pleasant enough and while I wouldn’t go as far as to say Noyces style is distinct against the genre at that time. It’s clear that he worked very closely with the cinematographers to produce a work that DOES feel tight, to the point and most importantly its an end product that feels like the director gave a damn about what made it onto the screen.

Direction of the cast is good and solid too, with most of them being highly animated, very maneuverable around the scenes and settings and as mentioned there’s almost a cartoonish quality to it in places that definitely helps really amp up the end product in ways that other buddy action films or action comedies from the time couldn’t quite muster.

In particular, a lot of work clearly went into realizing Nick as a character for both Noyce and Haur. Haur himself actually claimed this was one of his most challenging roles of his career because he had to balance the sword play elements with his character having a serious affliction. Mercifully; I think Noyce and Haur get the balance about right between giving Nick weight in terms of what happened to him being a plot factor, but they do give him some layers to play with physically through his mannerisms and how he holds himself. Noyce really pulls the best out of Haur here and gives the audience a spectrum to play with that, by the time the credits came around, it really felt like you got to know Nick fairly well.

It would also be amiss of me not to mention the direction and choreography around the fight scenes, which is tight, works well and looks great. They utilize quick cuts in the edit alongside masked punches and sword swishes to help create some decent combat sequences that look great and can even get a little intense in places. It’s not without its faults mind. I don’t know if they were trying to do a recurring gag, but there were a couple of instances where they had Nick slash his sword at someone, they’d flail as if they’d been killed, only to then reveal they were actually alright and that Nick had either *just* missed them, or done something less drastic (like cut their eyebrows off or ripped their shirt) the first time it was funny, but after that It just left me kind of eye rolling and wondering if the film had underun or something?

To me? The cine is probably where the film shines, this production has visuals that it ABSOLUTELY DOES NOT DESERVE. I was honestly beyond impressed with pretty much the whole feature in terms of not only its array of composition, but in terms of the variety of shot types and interesting experimentation that the film worked with. The absolute highlight for me has to be the scene in which Billy finds out about his mothers death and heads off into the cornfield. It’s a scene that NOT ONLY manages to nicely balance humor and somber tones through the cine and direction, but it manages to create an atmosphere that feels tense, funny and entertaining all in equal measures all in rotation and it juggles this while effortlessly swapping between al the various tones creating a blend that you’d think wouldn’t work…but actually does surprisingly well.

Performance wise, I’ve already sung Haurs praise for his dedication in trying to give a believable turn in the role. He owns each and every scene he’s in, he expresses and emotes perfectly for the situations as they unfold and he brings some genuine depth to a character that could have easily just been a caricature. So serious kudos to him, he really does knock this one out of the park, giving a performance that again, this film ABSOLUTELY did not deserve. Randall Cobb also delites here as “Slag” the lead henchman for the Casino. He’s a solid menacing presence who was a PERFECT fit to put up against Haur in this thing, every scene he’s in is such a delight to sit through and his final scene in this movie is just astounding and worth the price of admission alone.

The rest of the cast actually pose an interesting problem because…well…they’re having to go up against very animated and charismatic performances. As such…They kind of just sort of blend into the background of everything that’s going on. They more than do what’s required of them, and I think the director got what was needed. But if you’re up against Haur and Cobb who are putting their absolute all into these roles. You’re always going to be somewhat overshadowed…they’re decent. But struggle to pull off anything truly memorable.

And finally; the soundtrack! And mild mumbles from the actors aside, what we have here is a decent acoustic sounding score that’s honestly unlike anything I’ve quite heard before. It has that actiony edge, but there’s a tinge of “World” music about it, a tinge of woodwind and percussion. And a smidge of rock in the mix as well. The results are quite delightful to listen to honestly, one of the better action scores I’ve heard in quite some time. So I’d say big win on that front! I’d love to hear it isolated some day!

Blind Fury was released on VHS in the UK by RCA Columbia in 1990 on rental, it would later receive a home video release by VCI and the cinema club in 1997. It had multiple DVD releases over here as well with the earliest being in 2004 and a reissue on DVD and bluray happening in 2018 courtesy of Fremantle.My version came courtesy of mill creek entertainment who released a limited edition “retro vhs” version of the release with a rather nifty slipcover. Extras are a little thin on the ground, but the picture quality is top notch, and I believe it’s still in print and goes for dirt cheap! So grab it while you can!

I thought Blind Fury was a hoot! While i’d stop short of saying I loved it, I could definitely recommend checking this one out. It actually stunned me when I found out this film didn’t perform too well at the box office. They were gearing up for a sequel just before the film got a public release, but despite positive reviews and two thumbs up from Siskel and Ebert, it bombed at the box office in the US and as such the studio restricted it’s european release to only a handful of cinemas. The film managed to do quite well despite a brief cinema run in the UK, where Hauer was a known household name due to his appearances at the time in a very successful string of adverts for Guiness. As such, people picked the movie up based on word of mouth and Haurs appearance alone and subsequently it ended up being one of the top 10 VHS rentals over here for quite a few weeks.

While it’s nice the film did eventually find a bit of success, I think it deserved better than the hand it was dealt on this. With a quirky and tonally unusual script, fantastic direction and cine some more than reasonable performances and a HELL of a decent score, I think Blind Fury is a movie you really need to check out sooner rather than later. I could see it pairing up quite well with movies like “American Ninja 5” or maybe even something a bit out there like “Robot in the family”…So if you’re bored this weekend and looking for a pick me up. Maybe give this one a try!

source https://letterboxd.com/tytdreviews/film/blind-fury/1/