Blinder (Richard Gray, 2013) wr. Michele David-Gray, Scott Didier, Richard Gray, dp Greg de Marigny; Oliver Ackland, Anna Hutchison, Rose McIver, Jack Thompson, Zoe Carides, Josh Helman, Angus Sampson; AFL; Oz release 7 March 2013
It's legitimate to take the high moral ground, as Luke Buckmaster does in his review, but this film is really not worth the trouble. It's a tedious, over-long, trivial story about local (AFL) football as played specifically on the southern Victorian coast (to get the locals to go and see it in Torquay and Ocean Grove and so on). The actual playing-of-football, of which there is about ten times too much, is unconvincing, and the foley work is laid on with a trowel. One thinks of other AFL films, The Club, and The Great MacArthy, which suddenly look like powerful documentaries compared to this amateur effort. The only good thing about it is the magnificent acting of Jack Thompson, who does not know how to give a poor performance. You might say he has revisited his 1980 coach, and has now said all there is to say about the subject.
Blinder isn’t exactly what a sport beleaguered by an endless smattering of scandals involving drugs, violence and sex needed to help clean up its image: a sports film in which the female characters are served up like cheap fish food and sex offenders are celebrated. Luke Buckmaster, Crikey.
Blinder is an uninspiring, B-grade effort, a plodding tale of healing old wounds, unresolved guilt and lost innocence. Don Groves, SBS.
Garry Gillard | New: 29 January, 2014 | Now: 7 January, 2020