Lucybespro It is a performances centric movie

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Bumpy Chip It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

FlashCallahan Emma is a girl in her 20s who has been blind for 20 years.A new type of eye operation partially restores her sight, but she is having problems: sometimes she doesn't "remember" what she's seen until later.One night she is awakened by a commotion upstairs. Peering out of her door, she sees a shadowy figure descending the stairs.Convinced that her neighbour has been murdered, she approaches the police, only to find that she is unsure if it was just her new eyes playing tricks on her....It's not a surprise that this didn't make much of an impact when released. These sort of thrillers were released every other month in the nineties, bu the inclusion of eye surgery is surely a novelty.It is, but thats where all the novel ideas end.We have Aiden Quinn, the lead detective, and guess who he ends up with?Stowe has a guide dog, guess what happens to it? And so on and so on.There is a little bit of a twist come the end, but it doesn't really matter, all the blanks are filled in and it doesn't really bother the grey matter.Stowe is good in her role, and it has to be her best performance, its a shame she never really picked up better scripts, could she really has screen presence.See it if you like thrillers, you don't expect to be surprised too much...

freakfire-1 There was no 'story box' in this film, but there certainly was a mystery - a mystery surrounding who was the killer. But not just that, but was there a killer. And the main witness was a woman who's vision wasn't great and was a new recipient of a cornea transplant.Throughout the viewer has to question whether there actually is a killer. You might suspect the doctor for good reason. Maybe one of the cops as well. The writers certainly keeps you in long enough to discover who the killer is and if the formerly blind woman actually saw him or her.Overall, its a fairly good movie. Not too thrilling, but enough to watch again someday. "B-"

Bob-45 Before it nearly strangles on the limitations of the genre, `Blink' provides suspense, sensuality, music and some marvelous character studies. Madelaine Stowe plays a fiddler, blind since childhood maternal abuse, who partially regains her sight, only to become the only one who can identify a serial killer. Stowe is terrific in the part. Course, sexually predatory and foul mouthed, she is NOT the vulnerable, tender `Audrey Hepburn / Mia Farrow' victim we normally see in this kind of movie. Stowe is real, perhaps too much so. Nonetheless, this is an Oscar-caliber performance. Aiden Quinn nearly matches Stowe as the conceited, callous police detective who, doesn't so much as `gets in touch with his feelings' than he acquires them as the story unfolds. This makes for an interesting character study; but, by film's climax, we're worried more about him than Stowe. WARNING: SPOILERS I believe the confrontation between Quinn and Stowe at the station was a mistake, particularly Stowe's level of viciousness and vulgarity. This reduces our empathy for Stowe at the critical climax of the movie. The weird hallucinogenic confrontation on the commuter train doesn't help, either. Better that the killer pursue and attack Quinn for getting too close. AN EXPLANATION FOR ONE PUZZLED VIEWER. The killer had either given the cross to the organ donor or she wore one. You can see this in a picture of her near the end of the film. After murdering a women, he would place a cross on her. He made no attempt to `reharvest' the transplanted organs, except from Stowe. He strangled the women into unconsciousness. Despite the comment earlier in the film, they were probably not dead when he raped them. He then cut their wrists so they would bleed to death, preventing the harvesting of organs. I liked this movie, a lot; though I have to admit I felt a little empty at the end. Pardon the pun, but "Blink" is certainly worth a look.

Robert J. Maxwell SPOILERS.Aidan Quinn has always struck me as a nice guy and a competent actor. Handsome in a James Deanish way but without the extravagant thespianism, and not afraid to have himself thoroughly deglamorized when the part calls for it. And that's him in "Blink." He even musters a first-class Chicago accent (not surprising) for a film shot in Chicago. Madeleine Stowe is equally appealing, in part for quite different reasons. She has a low voice that is simultaneously throaty and nasal (all her sinuses seem to be pumping away like a dolphin's) and she has a tendency to break into endearing childish giggles when she is about to undergo a corneal transplant, overjoyed at the prospect of being able to see again. And on top of all that she is a beautiful woman with a slender and very feminine body, the kind of figure you might see in a 19th-century illustration of Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale about the little mermaid, only better because Stowe has legs as well as a tail. I also give her bonus points because this is her most vulgar, spunkiest performance on screen.The film doesn't have a lot of action in it. There is not a car chase in sight, nothing explodes, and all the murders but one take place off camera. About five shots are fired all together. But Apted, the director, has organized everything so that it rambles along without a boring moment, except perhaps for the predictable shoot-out at the end. We have a half-blind woman in jeopardy locked up in a big garage with some moron who wants to tear her eyeballs out. "Give me back those eyes that belong to her," he says, or something like that. The situation is straight out of Helpful Hints for Screenwriters -- Part Three, Section Two, Subsection A, sub b, backslash 4. "Put a blind woman in a dark room with a murderer." In fact, the script is the weakest part of the movie. The heavy is another serial killer following a pattern which it takes the cops two hours to figure out. (He's collecting the organs that were harvested from his dead girl friend.) Some of it makes no sense. What's the business with the Byzantine cross? Why does he slash his victim's wrists postmortem so that the blood will drain away and the organ transplants no longer of use? (That is, since nobody bleeds after death anyway.) And -- okay -- I can buy "delayed perception," although I've never heard of it, but after her transplant Stowe begins hallucinating her mother, the killer, her boyfriend, her neighbors, even in their absence. We're only one step away here from the old Helpful Hints for Screenwriters story of the transplanted organs that carry the impulses and sensations of their donors. (Cf., The Hands of Orlac or whatever.) Enough to make me worry about my hair transplants. There is also something about Stowe's wanting to be in control all the time, a desire of which nothing is made in the script, and is only there to provide something for her and Quinn to fight about.But Apted pretty much compensates for these weaknesses through sheer efficiency. He even handles the atmosphere people with notable effectiveness. (When Stowe bursts out of the police station's men's room after a brutal argument with Quinn, we see a knot of cops in the background who have been eavesdropping and they casually break up and stroll away.)There are also themes that explore the sensory apparatus of the human body. Actually, it's quite a sensuous film. The chief theme of course is Stowe's vision, and she's the actress for the part because her eyes are slightly crossed. We get some idea of her vision from time to time through a distorting lens and some morphing, but it's a technique that's only used when it's called for. There are no visual fireworks other than that. None of the shots calls attention to itself, as in, "Look, Ma, I'm a Director!" It's a tactile movie too. There are two or three love scenes between Quinn and Stowe and they're pretty rambunctious. Lamps get knocked over and all that, and she feels faces and hands, while Quinn feels her. Pretty sexy actually, but not at all titillating. Stowe has said she always made love with her eyes closed while she was blind, and fantasized a good deal, and in one such session Quinn asks her to open her eyes and look at him. It's a rather tender moment. The chemical senses are represented only by smell, taste being neglected. There are lots of flowers in this movie. When Quinn visits the home of victim number three, the husband had just brought his wife a large bouquet, and Quinn is holding another bunch of flowers. In one scene, Stowe tiptoes nude up to a vase full of roses that Quinn has given her and she sniffs one rapturously. And then there is the surgical soap. As for the kinetic senses, there are several sports scenes -- basketball (two) and baseball (1), in addition to the rather strenuous lovemaking. The auditory sense is centered around music. Stowe plays the violin. Quinn brings her CDs of The Drovers, the Irish band she plays with, of Vivaldi, and of Pearl Jam. "Eclectic," remarks Stowe. "I was drunk," replies Quinn.This is worth watching if it happens along on cable. It's even worth renting.