BLINK
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Madeleine Stowe, Aidan Quinn, Peter Friedman, James Remar, Laurie Metcalf. Screenplay: Dana Stevens. Director: Michael Apted.
Good thrillers are hard to find, and I am inordinately fond of good thrillers. In combination, these two factors lead me to do things like give an "8" rating to MALICE (which I still defend, incidently). The catharsis that a suspenseful tale provides seems to me to be the essence of what movies are for many viewers: a visual rollercoaster. However, far more common than good thrillers are slapdash would-be scarefests stitched together from other better films like some celluloid Frankenstein's monster. Witness BLINK: one part REAR WINDOW, two parts JENNIFER 8, and one part from just about every suspense film cliche you could come up with if given a week to think about it.
BLINK tells the story of Emma Brody (Madeleine Stowe), a fiddle player in a Celtic band who has been blind for twenty years. One day she receives a call from her doctor (Peter Friedman) that a cornea transplant donor is at last available. After the operation, Emma experiences an odd side effect, a perceptual delay which causes things seen initially only as blurs to jump into focus in the mind hours or even days later. This perceptual delay occurs when she spots a serial killer leaving the scene of the crime in the apartment above her. She takes her information to Det. John Hallstrom (Aidan Quinn), but her reliability as a witness is justifiably in question. However, as Hallstrom follows his only lead, he also gets involved with her. Soon it becomes clear that the killer knows there has been a witness, and Emma finds herself next on his list.
There are some things that BLINK tries to do differently that show some early promise. As played by Madeleine Stowe, Emma spends her first few days with sight coming to terms with appearances, as it matters to her for the first time whether she is considered pretty. It's a nice bit of psychology for which I had high hopes. Emma's distorted vision is captured by some nifty computer effects and Dante Spinotti's eerie photography, allowing us into her head quite effectively. It's too bad that potential is wasted on such a positively bland story. For a thriller, BLINK is almost completely lacking in tension, its one good scare coming with Emma's first recognition of the killer's face. There's no opportunity to guess the killer's identity, either, as clues yeield a "so what" result. BLINK just trudges along, focusing on a relationship between Hallstrom and Emma which makes no sense.
What is most distressing about that relationship is that it cops out on its character development where it would have been most interesting. Stowe shows the blind Emma as confident and independent, but without the omnipresent bitterness which characterizes so many blind screen characters; then, in a bit of irony which might have made O. Henry smile, she becomes dependent on others only when she can finally see. That internal conflict should have been the driving force behind her relationship with Hallstrom: while she needs the reassurance he gives her that she's desirable, she hates that she needs that reassurance. But screenwriter Dana Stevens seems incapable of that level of subtlety, and there seems to be no rhyme or reason to their eventual (and inevitable) coupling, and subsequent conflict. It doesn't help that Hallstrom is basically a blank, and that Quinn does nothing to make him particularly worth her time.
If only that were the only fault in the script. We start with the now-ubiquitous serial killer, which if movies were to be believed are virtually on every street corner, and head from there into CinemaThrillerLand. Here, dogs warn of impending danger, but are heeded to late. Here, cops always fall for the women they are assigned to protect, and vice-versa. Here, blind people always manage to have their final confrontations with the killer in the dark. Here, cops exchange dialogue like:
HALLSTROM: She is the key.
DETECTIVE RIDGELY: To the case, or to you?
BLINK could have been a contender. The elements were there. It was just too slow to make any of them count, and too timid to go to the soul of the characters.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 blinks: 4.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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