Directed by: John Lee Hancock
Produced by: Broderick Johnson, Andrew Kosove, Gil Netter
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Tim McGraw, Quinton Aaron, Lily Collins, Jae Head, Kim Dickens, Kathy Bates
Music by: Carter Burwell
Release date: November 20, 2009

Plot: Seventeen-year-old Michael "Big Mike" Oher has been in foster care with different families in Tennessee, due to his mother's drug addiction; and every time he is placed in a new home, he runs back to her. His friend's father, Tony "Big Tony" Hamilton, on whose couch Mike has been sleeping, asks Burt Cotton, the football coach of Wingate Christian School, to help enroll his son and Mike. Impressed by Mike's size and athleticism, Cotton gets him admitted despite his poor academic record. Later, Michael is befriended by a younger student named Sean Tuohy, Jr./"SJ". SJ's mother, Leigh Anne, is a strong-minded interior designer and the wife of wealthy businessman Sean Sr.

The school staff tells Michael that his father has died, apparently due to an accident. Later, Leigh Anne and Sean watch their daughter Collins playing volleyball. After the game, Sean notices Michael picking up leftover food on the bleachers. One night, Leigh Anne notices Michael walking alone on the road, shivering in the cold without adequate clothing. When she learns that he plans to spend the night huddled outside the closed school gym, Leigh Anne offers to let him sleep on the couch in the Tuohy home.

The next morning, Leigh Anne notices that Michael has left. Seeing him walking away, she asks him to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with her family. Later, Leigh Anne drives Michael to his mother's house. He sees an eviction notice posted on the door, indicating that his mother is gone. Slowly, Michael becomes a member of the Tuohy family; Leigh Anne's friends question this and suggest that Collins might not be safe around Michael, but Leigh Anne criticizes them. She later asks Collins how she feels about it. Collins replies that they cannot just throw Michael out. When Leigh Anne seeks to become Michael's legal guardian, she learns he was taken from his drug-addict mother when he was seven and that no one knows her whereabouts. She is also told that, although he scored poorly in a career aptitude test, he was ranked in the 98th percentile in "protective instincts". Michael eventually improves his grades enough that he can play football at school. However, Michael appears to be hesitant to use his strength and size while learning to play football, Leigh Anne tells him, as an offensive lineman, he must protect his quarterback, just like he intends to do to his family. From that moment, Michael improves dramatically, well enough to play at the college level. However, to do that, he must meet the minimum grade point average to get in so the Tuohys hire a private tutor for him, the outspoken and kind Miss Sue.

Review: What could be a wonderful feel good movie and a young African American who is taken in and given love and support for a amazing career in football becomes a tragic piece of anglosaxon propaganda.

Within the first minutes of the film we see an inspiring football player, Joe Theismann, get crash tackled. We are told that he was injured for life and ould never play profesional footbal ever again. Then nothing else is mentioned. There is a sort of hint that this might be the big dilema that Michael Oher has to face as the film grows towards a climax. But nope, that doesn't happen. he just declares he wants to go to school where his family (the nice white family that adopted him) had gone to. As well as play football professionally. No mention of the tragic injury that would destroy Joe Theismann's career. Or leave him diabled for the rest of his life.

In the effort to bring out the feel good in a story it seems way too easy to over look the damage and injury caused to people along the way. No it seems Michael Oher is complaing the movie has upset his football career. Shouldn't he be talking about safe game play and making it up to the player he injured?

The film is a formula rant and a half. Not really worthy of the talents of Sandra Bullock or any of those who stared in it. perhaps not one to watch.

M J Flack