At First Sight (1999)

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

"At First Sight" is a beautifully made romance film about a guy who's been blind since always and falls in love with a girl that helps him finding sight. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen as planed, but has such a good story anyways.The actors are very sensible, their conversations are so well made (congratz Steve Levitt) that leave many philosophical thoughts to the spectator. How would life be without sight? How would we imagine things we've never seen? Virgil (or Val Kilmer) has such an aggressive expression, I felt like he was about to spank someone eventually. Don't know if it was intended, but that was my impression.So, this film is one of those rare romances that entertain and the time seems to fly, so I surely recommend this to everyone.

Tightly-wound New York architect Mira Sorvino (as Amy Benic) gets a rubdown from hunky blind masseur Val Kilmer (as Virgil Adamson), and the two fall in love (you guessed it) "At First Sight". One can see this coming as Mr. Kilmer's strong hands begin to caress Ms. Sorvino's body. This is very much how the entire film plays out. Everything is obvious. The main plot development is when Kilmer undergoes treatment to recover his sight, thanks to conveniently placed doctor Bruce Davidson (as Charles Aaron). Kilmer has some good scenes after the operation, sister Kelly McGillis (as Jennie) makes the most of her supporting role, ex-husband Steven Weber (as Duncan Allanbrook) makes you want to see him win, and vision therapist Nathan Lane (as Phil Webster) gets in a few good lines. Director Irwin Winkler's most valuable player is clearly cinematographer John Seale.***** At First Sight (1/12/99) Irwin Winkler ~ Val Kilmer, Mira Sorvino, Kelly McGillis, Nathan Lane

Here in Crete Greece there are many films shown during the night on TV so my wife and I use the users comments to decide which films to record to watch at a decent hour. Although this film only got a rating of 5.6 which we feel is the bottom end of a film worth watching the plot outline sounded interesting so we gave it a go.Well I think that 5.6 is a bit too good a rating. 4.5 is better.The basic story about a man who was blind from the age of three regaining his sight is fine. However about 80 minutes would have been sufficient not the 128 minutes forced on to us. It was dragged out for the sake of it with lots of valueless scenes included. Our DVD recorder automatically put markers every six minutes on a recording and after about 80 minutes we started zapping forward 6 minutes and watching for 30 – 40 seconds to keep up to date with the plot.Val Kilmer's portrayal of a blind man was for him to smile incessantly throughout every scene, he seemed more creepy than anything.When they enter the old abandoned building which Kilmer had not known existed before then, he was very confident for a blind man entering a new space. He steps gingerly forward without his stick in to what? Could have been an old uncover well and that would have been the end of him and the film. But luckily for him it was just good solid floor boards.The father serves no purpose for being in this movie.The little kid next door pops up for no good reason and gets pretty annoying.It was OK to watch but perhaps I should have baked some bread it would have been better use of my time.

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.