Blind Fury

Slick tongue-in-cheek thriller giving Rutger Hauer an unusually sympathetic role as a blinded Vietnam veteran who's spent 20 years in the jungle honing his other senses as well as his swordsmanship. [27 Oct 2002, p.9]

Clearly based on the Japanese film series about Zatoichi, the blind samurai, Blind Fury is also openly tongue-in-cheek. It is little but violence and gags, but the violence often is so cleverly and improbably staged that it's funny too. [19 Mar 1990, p.B08]

Hauer's Parker, shambling, shrewd and powerful, is humorous and appealing, and Noyce skilfully orchestrates a hilarious army of gurning baddies. It thunders along admirably, if rather unbelievably, and to counter the sickly moments with the cute kid (Call), there's plenty of pleasurable ass-kicking. Read full review

Blind Fury is an action film with an amusing gimmick, toplining Rutger Hauer, as an apparently invincible blind Vietnam vet who wields a samurai sword with consummate skill. Read full review

Tepid action picture that fails to live up to its interesting premise. Read full review

Blind Fury is a rehashing of movies you passed on the first time, like, uh, Over the Top. Read full review

It was not clear to me why Phillip Noyce, the Australian director of the fine Backroads and Newsfront, should want to make this comedy thriller as his first American picture. But possibly his vision was impaired where the script was concerned. [12 Jul 1990]

In between the scenes of folks being impaled, cut in half with swords and blasted with shotguns are moments of light comedy, but these moments don't succeed in lightening up the picture but rather make it seem as if it were made by Martians with only the vaguest notion of human sensibilities. [16 Mar 1990, p.E6]

It is not just that this action-comedy is a totally stupid, by-the-numbers collection of every action movie cliche ever coined. It is that the thing is so upsettingly mean-spirited and incorrigibly ugly, a movie that absolutely revels in sadism and constantly asks us to laugh at the most sordid and explicit acts of violence. [17 Mar 1990]

Blind Fury is cheerfully stupid, deliberately cartoonish and always self-mocking. [17 Mar 1990, p.C5]

Poor Rutger Hauer - the new decade apparently isn't his. This hearty trouper's latest, Blind Fury, is nobody's swell time at the multiplex. [30 Mar 1990, p.5D]

The Zatoichi films are amusing comic-strip spectaculars — the blood spurts like something out of a Hawaiian Punch commercial. The action in Blind Fury, on the other hand, is resolutely earthbound and heavy-duty. The fact that Hauer kicks, slashes, and punches without the benefit of sight just makes you acutely aware of how ludicrous this stuff always is. Read full review