At First Sight
January. 15,1999 PG-13A blind man has an operation to regain his sight at the urging of his girlfriend and must deal with the changes to his life.
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Reviews
Powerful
Excellent but underrated film
There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.
This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
When I saw the average rating of 5. something, on this site, I thought oh well maybe I'll watch it anyway since I like Mira Sorvino and it was based on a real man's story. Also it was free on a channel I have cause it was older:), but I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. Not an Oscar winner or anything but very well done story about a man blind since a young child, who went through some unpleasant treatments to help him regain his sight that didn't work. Now an adult, very used to being blind, he meets a young woman whom he likes, and she likes him too. She hears about a new surgery to help him regain his vision and wants him to try it, but his sister, who has been there for him his whole life helping him survive the sighted world, objects. His father left the family early on, and hasn't been in contact with him at all! He has to adjust his life drastically, and the movie shows all the pitfalls of suddenly seeing things and not always knowing what to do.It was pretty well acted, I thought, and made me want to find out more about the real man. All in all, well worth watching.
An almost perfect date movie, AT FIRST SIGHT tells the largely true tale of a man, blind from an early age, who risks one last operation in an attempt to restore his sight. Val Kilmer, always an acquired taste, plays the blind guy. Mira Sorvino, looking an awful lot like the older daughter on FAMILY TIES, plays his newest love interest who encourages him to try the tricky operation. The film is long, but the romance leading up to Sorvino's determination to get Kilmer onto the operating table one more time, is strongly compelling. The film has a sensuous side, as Kilmer is a professional masseuse and has a very erotic massage scene involving a nearly naked Sorvino. Veteran actress Kelly McGillis of TOP GUN fame is aboard as Kilmer's overly protective older sister. If you can stand frequent closeups of Kilmer's flabby lips and googly eyes, AT FIRST SIGHT is hardly the worst chick flick ever made.
How ordinary this turned out to be...Here was an enormous opportunity to give us an exposition on the discovery of sight - what else are movies for? But no...this is reduced to the lowest common denominator of melodrama.This really could have been something in the hands of, say, a DePalma - someone who understands that perspective comes first...Winkler sticks to flat notions of fish out of water jokes transmogrifying into occasions to grab the tissues.But then, how can we expect adventure when these things are built around star appeal? Pretty-boy Kilmer acts with his upper teeth; Sorvino is just embarrassingly bad, not even glamorous.
I happened to come across this movie one night on cable. I have to say I'm sorry I didn't see it in the cinema. Val Kilmer did an excellent job playing a blind man, and the struggles it entails as he adjusts from his dark world, to a seeing one, and having to adjust to loosing it all again. I could't help but get wrapped up in his struggles to adjust, the frustration he feels when he tries to adjust to the seeing world and what Amy (Mira S) expects of him as his eyes begin to fail him once again. I was surprised to see, at the end of the movie, that it was based on a true story. Hats off to Val Kilmer for job well done - he was very believable.