The Blind Side ***
The marketing campaign for The Blind Side plays up the inspirational aspects of the story – that it’s based on the real-life rags-to-riches tale of football player Michael Oher and the woman whose fierce love and determination to help him allowed him to see the Promised Land. There’s no doubt this is a crowd-pleaser, as occasional bursts of applause attested during the screening I attended. The film skillfully plays on an audience’s emotions, but that’s what this sort of movie does, and director John Lee Hancock shows a sure hand when it comes to careful manipulation. He rarely goes too far and he knows enough to leaven the heavy emotional aspects with bursts of comedy and the occasional telling point about what causes us to value individuals in this society.
