Hold your katana close, and get ready for the silliest slay-ride you might be lucky enough to see. Blind Fury is a 1989 action-comedy starring Rutger Hauer, and is probably my favorite performance from the late actor. The film is a remake of the 1967 Japanese sword-fighting film Zatoichi Challenged, and was directed by Phillip Noyce (The Saint, The Quiet American, Patriot Games, Clear and Present Danger)
Hauer stars as Nick Parker, an American GI who is missing in action during the Vietnam War. Blinded by an explosion and separated from his platoon, Nick is taken in by a Vietnamese village and taught to wield a katana with deadly accuracy. Twenty years later, he returns to the states to find his war buddy Frank (played by “Lost” actor Terry O’Quinn). Instead, he comes upon Frank’s ex-wife and son, just as a group of thugs also finds them. The thugs, led by infamous 80’s bad guy Randall “Tex” Cobb (Raising Arizona, Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, Police Academy 4: Citizens on Patrol), murder Frank’s wife before Nick dispatches most of them and escapes with Billy, Frank’s son. The two set out from Florida on a cross-country road trip to find Frank in Vegas. Along the way, they are continually hunted by the bad guy’s goons. The bad guy is played by Noble Willingham, in a dress rehearsal of pretty much the same character he plays in The Last Boy Scout (1991). He is a Vegas casino owner who cheats his customers and sells designer drugs. Frank, who has become a chemist and an inveterate gambler, is under the thumb of Willingham’s “MacCready”, and MacCready wants Frank’s son for additional leverage while Frank cooks up the blue drugs. Following all this? really, it’s not a very sophisticated plot.
What makes this more fun than the thousand other 80’s action films out there? It’s the talent, of course. Hauer and Willingham really lean into their characters, making them almost cartoonish beacons of good and evil. Randall “Tex” Cobb is always delightfully monstrous as the baddie. Nick Cassavetes (The Notebook, The Wraith, Face-Off) and Rick Overton (Gung Ho, Willow, The Rocketeer) play the incompetent Pike Brothers with over-the-top but never obnoxious gusto and guile. Wait for the elevator scene to see what I mean. The great Sho Kosugi (Enter The Ninja (1981) and its sequels) rounds out the bad guy corral, and has a fantastic swordfight with Hauer at the film’s climax. Terry O’Quinn doesn’t get to do much but look either scared or shocked, but he handles what he’s given. A young Brandon Call plays “Billy”, and does so competently but without showing much skill. That’s perfect, considering he went on to star in “Baywatch”.
This isn’t the kind of film that would ever have been considered for an Oscar. Theatrical audiences ignored it. But I treasure my VHS copy and watch it often. It’s also periodically on the free streaming channel Tubi and has been released on Blu-Ray.
