Column:

'Blind Fury' brings hope

By Dieter Kurtenbach

Published Sept. 16, 2008

I've checked every legal site on the series of tubes known as the Internet and alas, it seems that this glimpse of a miracle that I saw early Sunday morning might be one of the fleeting variety.

"Blind Fury" was found haphazardly. Most great things are. Flipping through the channels at 2:14 in the morning with my buddies Turkey Sub and the Captain, we were expertly navigated through the sea of sex toys on Oxygen and "Exposed" on MTV. As I seized the controller we went to the local Fox affiliate. In a perfect storm of apathy and stupidity we stayed on the channel with the man wielding a sword and fighting off ninjas in a dark warehouse.

We were on a deliberate search for a Steven Seagal movie. What we found was so much more.

As the protagonist neutralized ninja after ninja it became apparent to the Captain, Subs and I that this was no ordinary protagonist. As the main ninja came out to finish the job like Dr. Robotnik in "Sonic II," he took a bite from an apple. He then threw the apple up in the air, only to have it cut in half, midair, by the protagonist.

Oh, I forgot to mention - the protagonist is blind.

Blind as a bat. And yet this man is somehow engaging in hand to hand combat with numerous people and is able to cut an apple midair. This was no ordinary hero.

The battle continued, with the proverbial boss located in the hot tub region. But this was not for a quick soak after a hard workout. This was a battle to the death. Our hero swinging blindly, sorry, aimlessly, cuts a perfectly placed elevated heating lamp from its post into the hot tub, making this dip in the tub fatal.

The men move to the edge of the Jacuzzi, tiptoeing around the death pool while somehow engaging in dramatic sword battle that our protagonist eventually wins.

Don't think about how a blind person could know that the hot tub is now electric, that type of thinking is a buzz kill.

I don't want to ruin the rest but more cronies try to defeat our hero and none are successful. One was cut in half and fell out a window 25,000 feet down a cliff thanks to the help of a random kid who shows up in the movie to throw our hero his cane/sword. The sword sails over our hero's head and he nearly falls into the death tub, yet he recovers it to win the battle.

The Captain, Turkey Sub and I only saw the last 20 minutes of "Blind Fury" but we laughed, we cried and we did both concurrently at times. For what we had just seen was the worst, and best, movie of all time.

This was no ordinary blind man; this was no ordinary movie. This film was outrageous, yet it was far more than just shallow entertainment. "Blind Fury" gives hope to everyone it finds.

No matter how bad your life might be in the dumps, "Blind Fury" gives you hope. Maybe you failed that paper, or your girlfriend dumped you. Maybe life is too hard, maybe you are scared that you won't get a job when you leave school. If you are feeling those things, "Blind Fury" is hope.

How? Think of it this way: In the late 1980s a man named Charles Robert Carner wrote the movie "Blind Fury." He then took it to a studio and they paid him money to use his script and gave millions of dollars to Phillip Noyce to make Carner's vision come true. The result has been ridiculed for years yet still made almost $3 million.

Anyone who doesn't have a better idea for a movie probably can't read, but for the rest of us literates, "Blind Fury" gives us hope that no matter how hard you fall, you are smart enough to pull yourself up. All you need to do is create your own "Blind Fury."

Hopefully you come up with something a bit more plausible, though.