Love Story Drawn-out But Worth A Look

by Jason R. Hewlett

You have to give Val Kilmer some credit. He is, despite all the bad press of the last few years, a very good actor. He's been totally convincing in every role he's played from "Batman Forever" to "The Ghost and the Darkness" to "The Saint" and now in "At First Sight." He's completely believable as a blind man. The way he walks and moves about and tilts his head is 100% believable in my mind. He may be a grade A prick in real life (I wouldn't know as I haven't met the man) but he knows his job.

The story of "At First Sight" is based on a real event like "A Civil Action" and "Patch Adams" before it. It comes from a story called "To See and Not See" by Oliver Sacks, M.D. and details the love affair between a masseus named Virgil (Val Kilmer) and a New York architect played by Mira Sorvino. It's a pretty standard romance plot: boy and girl meet, fall in love, nearly breakup, and then come together for a happy ending. Nothing original there but the hook to this movie is the fact that Kilmer's blind. What makes it even more interesting is, at mid way through the story, when Kilmer undergoes a cataract operation and regains his sight.

Imagine going from a world of darkness where your main method for gathering input is touch and now your overwhelmed by all this imagery. Imagine trying to differentiate every facial expression a person gives. Imagine taking in concepts like depth perception. It's amazing stuff really. Stuff I've never even considered would be an issue but Steve Levitt's script brings up these issues and they are dealt with in a fascinating manner. These sequences make the movie, not the by-the-numbers love story.

It's too bad, though, that the combo of the love story and the sight story take so long to play out. The film comes in at two hours and ten minutes and could have been trimmed. There's a subplot involving Sorvino's ex-husband (well played by Steven Weber) that could have been dumped to save time as could a minor mention of Kilmer's estranged father. They're dead weight really. Some of Kilmer's goofy lines could have been trimmed as well. Blind jokes are fine for a while but they where thin eventually. The script could have used another rewrite to trim it up. The result would have made for a tighter, more satisfying view.

Still, not a bad effort. Irwin Winkler's direction is more suited here in a drama as opposed to his last film, the "thriller" "The Net." The cast, aside from Kilmer of course, are all convincing and the characters ring true. A good date movie with some weight behind it.

5.5 out of 10!