As what the film poster obviously shows, "The Blind Side" is a sports movie....a football movie, to be exact. It's one of the most awarded and talked about movies of 2009 so out of sheer curiosity, I took the time to download the movie via BitTorrent. I'm usually not a big fan of sports movie but after watching the whole film, I have realized that "The Blind Side" is a complete exception to my dislike.
"The Blind Side", which was based on the 2006 book The Blind Side: Evolution of the Game by Michael Lewis, is an inspiring story of Michael "Big Mike" Oher (Quinton Aaron), an African-American who has been in foster care of different families for 17 years. Luckily, he was accepted at Wingate Christian School (known as Briarrest Christian School in reality) after his friend's father convinced the coach, who, in turn, convinced the school principal that Michael, indeed, has great potentials to become an athlete. In school, Michael Oher met Sean "SJ" Jr. (Jae Head) and quickly became his friend. SJ is the son of Sean (Tim McGraw) and Leigh Anne (Sandra Bullock) Touhy, an interior designer , and has an older sister named Collins (Lily Collins), who studies in the same school. Michael was introduced to SJ's family when one freezing night, Leigh Anne offered Mike to stay in their house after noticing that the poor, homeless boy was shivering in the middle of the dark road. Eventually, Michael Oher became a part of their family, a fact that was easily accepted by Collins and SJ but not by Leigh Anne's friends, who believed that it will greatly affect her kids' social life. Nonetheless, she continued to make "Big Mike" a real part of their family until she discovered at school that even though he has scored low in essentially every aspect, he scored in the 98th percentile in 'protective instincts'.
Consequently, they enrolled Mike in the school's football team and as they say, the rest is history. Bestowed with natural protective skills and unbelievable strength, Michael caught the eyes of every college coaches around the state carrying along them various offers for the boy with extraordinary talent. But in order for Mike to get the NCAA Division I Scholarship, he has to get a grade of at least 2.5 GPA, the reason why Leigh Anne hired Miss Sue (Kathy Bates) as his private tutor. During the last part of the film, conflict arose when NCAA investigator probed Mike's decision in choosing University of Mississippi instead of University of Tennessee, suspicious that Leigh Anne, who is a University of Mississippi alumna, forced him make such a contradicting decision as Mike has Tennessee as his home-state team. Mike confronted Leigh Anne but after being enlightened that Leigh Anne will be happy for whatever his decision will be, he still opted to accept the Ole Miss scholarship because his family has gone to school there.Aside from the fact that this movie has showed great depth in story-telling from start to finish, I also admire how Sandra Bullock portrayed her role which admirably broke the "dumb comedienne" stereotype that has been attached to her name. Without a doubt, Sandra deserves to receive major awards to praise the feat she has got for this performance. Although there are some boring parts in the movie, I have to say that "The Blind Side" is a movie based on reality that truly bites. It's a very inspiring movie that shows us that every one has a right to dream big and become big. Perhaps, "The Blind Side" will be an ideal benchmark for sports movies in the future who should focus also on the story and not just on stimulating action of sports.
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