The Blindside

Whilst it's normally difficult for me to produce brief and relatively uninspired film reviews, The Blindside is a film deserving of one. Somehow nominated for Best Film, and Sandra Bullock won Best Female in a Leading Role, The Blindside is the fairytale American real-life story of how a timid, academically-lacking black man made his way from the ghetto into the big time that is the NFL.

Though the exact motives for this film aren't clear, the level of patronisation throughout is appalling. What Hollywood doesn't seem to have learned in the last two decades is that by actively and aggressively showing leniency towards the supposedly inferior races, it doesn't condemn racism within films or the media, it simply highlights how obvious positive discrimination is.

In The Blindside, there are examples all over of how the middle class Republican housewives - and indeed the rest of the WASPs as a collective - perceive the so-called inferior characters within their idea of what America is. They're the slaves, the valets, their gardeners, their maids and cleaners. This viewpoint will not change until the media tells the suburban American to.

For these exact reasons, The Blindside cannot be treated as a genuine or serious film. Sure, it's based on true events, but I refuse to believe that the infuriatingly racist views portrayed in the film are necessary to essentially propel what is basically an anti-racism story into the audience's brains.

A film which is so clearly lacking in substance, in genuine moral highground, and in sincerity doesn't deserve a good score.