Blind (Beul-la-in-deu) (6/10)

December 29th, 2011

Blind women in movies have done pretty well over the years, their unaffected (1-2-3-4-5) senses working overtime to compensate for their loss of sight as they defend themselves from would-be assailants. Think Audrey Hepburn and the fridge, Mia Farrow in Blind Terror or Uma Thurman in Jennifer Eight for starters, but the list goes on. Well, here’s another one. Blinded in a car accident, cop-cadet Min Soo-ah has the misfortune to be picked up by a serial killer. The cops, you won’t be surprised to know, don’t believe her.

They’re pretty dependable chaps, the South Korean filmmaking fraternity. You can always rely on them for crisp, clean cinematography, a bit of violence, and cops that are dumber than doughnuts. Blind has all of that, plus a cute guide dog that you probably shouldn’t get too attached to.

Soo-ah (Ha-Neul Kim), early thirties and blind, had her police career taken away from her when she lost the use of her eyes. Gauging her intelligence against some of South Korea’s finest, you might think that she would still have been over-qualified. She’s waiting in the rain one day for a cab to arrive. A car pulls up and whisks her away. It isn’t a cab. She takes in her surroundings casually, only to be disturbed when the car hits a woman in the road. ‘Not to worry’, the driver tells her, ‘it’s just a dog’. Fortunately (for Soo-ah, not the dead pedestrian) the diversion changes the driver’s plan somewhat. His original plan was to bump off our heroine, but now his thought turn to disposing of the dead girl in the road.

The police are called – it’s a hit and run, after all – and immediately dismiss Soo-ah’s claims. What could she know? She’s blind and probably stupid. Yes, the police don’t come out of this movie as being particularly sensitive, or particularly smart. Detective Jo (Hie-Bong Jo), the flatfoot eventually saddled with the sightless one, is amazed that she can tell that he smokes. You see what we’re dealing with here?

Of course, the cop will eventually come to realise that Soo-ah knows her onions, as well as her black bean noodles, and begins the hunt for the driver. An off-hand remark ties him in to other reports of other missing women and soon we’ve got ourselves a serial killer. Like all serial killers in typical serial killer movies, he’s not the type to slink away and keep his head down until the coast is clear, nuh-uh. He’s decided that Soo-ah knows too much and must be offed. In mortal danger and without one of her more important senses, the race against time begins.

The start of Blind promises little. Soo-ah’s accident is shown, and is effective enough, but then the set-up to her blindness and society’s ham-fisted attempts to interact with her are just plain banal. I tapped my fingernails. Once the meat and bones of the story kicks in, though, I was pleased to discover that this was actually a decent – if pretty standard – thriller. The formula is well-worn, but is quite a rarity in modern movies. Us seasoned veterans have seen it before, though, but that shouldn’t deter you if you’re in the mood for an eighties-style catch-or-be-caught adventure. Ha-Neul Kim overdoes it slightly with the vacant stare off into middle-distance act, and Hi-Bong Jo won’t win any nominations for understated performance of the year, but the general walkthrough is perfectly fine. The hero and villain will dance around each other for a bit and peripheral characters should cancel any long-term subscriptions they might have. Minor in comparison to some of the beautiful stuff coming out of South Korea recently, Blind is still probably worth a look-see (sorry).