Blind Justice (1994)

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Although derivative of many other films, this short little western still packs a punch.

Armand Assante is nearly-blind gunfighter Canaan, traveling with a baby. He is looking for the baby's mother, asking everyone he finds about the town she is supposed to be in. He stops in one town where a group of soldiers is guarding a shipment of silver, which is being eyed by the local bandits. The soldiers, trapped, send Canaan out for help. All hell breaks loose.

Assante is very good as the embittered gunfighter, and often very funny. His blindness never becomes gimmicky, although one has to wonder how he can ride a horse. He uses his hearing and sense of smell to shoot, how does he know in which direction the horse is going? Adam Baldwin, as the soldiers' sergeant Hastings, is great, as is Robert Davi in his best role since "Licence to Kill" as the main villain. The one cast liability here is Oscar nominee Elisabeth Shue as Caroline. Shue delivers all of her lines in a flat, monotonal, vaguely-Valley Girl accent. Canaan and Caroline's forced romance is also the weakest part of the script. One scene to watch for is in the climax as a character is blown through the doors of a building. I rewound that three times just to bask in an action shot I had never seen before. This feels like the first film of a proposed series that never came to fruition, and with an 85 minute running time, you have to wonder what they cut out.

However, I do recommend "Blind Justice."

Stats:
(1994) 85 min. (* * * *) out of five stars
-Directed by Richard Spence
-Written by Daniel Knauf
-Cast: Armand Assante, Elisabeth Shue, Robert Davi, Adam Baldwin, Ian McElhinney, Danny Nucci, M.C. Gainey, Titus Welliver, Jack Black, Michael O'Neill, Douglas Roberts, Gary Carlos Cervantes, Jesse Dabson, Stanton Davis
(R)