Race, Privilege and Football

John Lee Hancock’s “The Blind Sideâ€� is a warm and slightly gooey flick based on the non-fiction book by Michael Lewis. It is about Michael Oher, an offensive tackle with the Baltimore Ravens, who made it out of a marginal ghetto existence with the help of a wealthy Memphis, TN, family which took him under its wing  and helped him get to college on a football scholarship.

   Sandra Bullock plays Leigh Anne Tuohy, wife of a fast-food entrepreneur and a hotshot interior designer in her own right. When she spots the beleagured Michael walking aimlessly in the rain on a chilly night, and realizes he has nowhere to go, she brings him home and sticks him on the couch.

And arranges for a tutor. And shows the football coach how to talk to the kid. And cusses out loudmouths in the stands, and home boys in the old neighborhood. And takes him shopping. And runs interference with coaches from big-time college programs.

   The film is really about Leigh Anne. Michael (played with disarming simplicity by Quinton Aaron) is the means by which Leigh Anne affirms her status as a Good Person.

   “The Blind Sideâ€� touches on a number of potentially prickly issues. The NCAA is alarmed when Michael chooses the University of Mississippi (the Tuohys’ alma mater). They wonder if other well-off people will adopt kids from poor areas and groom them for their favorite college athletic programs.

   Michael is admitted to a private Christian schoolwhere he comes to the attention of the football coach. But he stands out like a sore thumb in the mostly white, affluent crowd. He’s huge, he’s black, and nobody’s ever asked him to do homework before. Most of the teachers don’t get him, and he’s painfully shy. But only the science teacher really works with him, and discovers he is perfectly capable of learning.    In two problematic scenes, Leigh Anne goes by herself to Michael’s old neighborhood —  first to find his natural mother, a drug addict in rough shape, and then in search of Michael himself, who runs away after the interview with the NCAA investigator. The first scene, where the vastly different women bond after a fashion in their shared concern for the boy, is fairly believable (maybe because it’s short).

   But the second — in which Leigh Anne confronts a drug dealer and his cronies — is absurd. Sandra Bullock in a tight dress delivering a Dirty Harry-style exit line about being armed to half a dozen hostile young men is too much.

   It doesn’t really matter, though. The film acknowledges issues of race and privilege in passing, and gets back to the story, which is of the nice (white) lady who saves the poor (black) kid.

   “The Blind Sideâ€� is a little sappy here, and a little graphic there, and has great cameos of college football coaches being themselves. It also explains right in the beginning why the left tackle position is so important, which is crucial to the story but bewildering to the unitiated.

   Worth seeing, and you can take the older kids.

   “The Blind Sideâ€� is rated PG-13 for brief violence, and drug and sexual references. It is playing at The Moviehouse in Millerton, NY.

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