Tuesday, October 1, 2013

Blind Justice



Richard Spence's Blind Justice
Although derivative of many Oriental films, this short little western still packs a punch.

Assante is a nearly blind gunfighter traveling with a baby. He is looking for the baby's mother, asking everyone he finds about the town she is supposed to be in. He stops in one town where a group of soldiers is guarding a shipment of silver, which is being eyed by the local banditos. The soldiers, trapped, send Assante out for help. All hell breaks loose.

Assante is very good as the embittered gunfighter (and often very funny). His blindness never becomes gimmicky, although one has to wonder how he can ride a horse. He uses his hearing and sense of smell to shoot, how does he know in which direction the horse is going? Adam Baldwin, as the soldier's sergeant, is great, as he distances himself even further from the Baldwin brothers (no, he is not one of them, he can act). Robert Davi has his best role since "Licence to Kill" as the main villain. The one cast liability here is Oscar nominee...

There are no reinforcements!
Borrowing freely from westerns traditional and Italian, as well as from the Japanese Zatoichi series (blind swordfighter/masseur), BLIND JUSTICE works much better, and is a lot more enjoyable, than a mere plot description would indicate.

Armand Assante plays Canaan, a man blinded in Civil War. We see him first dressed in a black duster and wearing thick smoked glasses, walking across the desert with an infant bundled in his arms. Three Mexican banditos approach, whooping and hollering and firing their guns in the air. Canaan is dust, and if he manages to get out of this scrape he crawls into myth.

Although we're led to believe that Canaan retains some sight, his condition seems to have enhanced his other senses to a remarkable degree. Enough so that he's able to hear a scorpion walking across a hitching post from twenty feet and shoot it without touching the hand it was about to crawl onto.

The plot demands all of his super acute faculties...

Blind Justice-
Strange movie, but good. as all spag. westerns go. Do not think I have seen anything like it before and I have seen alot of movies. But have watched it more than once. It gets to you.

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