What am I, some kind of monster? You expect me to say nasty things about the movie about the blind high-school football player? The one that’s based on a true story? Well, the picture does feature an awful lot of lip service about being true to oneself, and in that spirit of honesty I must take the ball and run with it. 23 Blast is lousy.
23 Blast – named for a football play, but also a sharp way of ensuring high alphanumeric placement on VOD servers - fits into the oftentimes hard to define “faith-based” genre. This one squeaks in by inches, though, in that there are only a few moments of hardcore Christian imagery. Indeed, compared to this year’s earlier release When The Game Stands Tall, this flick is practically secular. (One kid drinks and is mildly disobedient, yet his comeuppance is quite light.) But it is thanks to the wisdom of a preacher (and a film-closing quote from Second Corinthians about living by faith and not by sight) that Travis Freeman decides to stop moping around his room and get back into the game.
Travis Freeman (affably played by the handsome Mark Hapka) is the team’s star receiver, and the yin to his chum Jerry the quarterback (Bram Hoover)’s yang. Ever since childhood they’ve been high-fiving over winning plays in anticipation of cheesy freeze-frames. Life is ideal in their Kentucky suburb, where people dress as they do now but no one appears to have a computer or a cellphone. The entirety of their society seems devoted to high-school football games, though this movie’s budget is too low to hire more than 20 extras to fill the stands. Nevertheless, when an odd eye infection renders Travis blind, the movie leaves the locker room and heads inward as Travis tries to find new footing.
His parents (Kim Zimmer and Dylan Baker), his quasi-girlfriend (Alexa Vega) and his new mobility teacher (the always wonderful Mary Ann Baker) get Travis back on his feet, but it’s his coach (Stephen Lang, you know, the guy from Avatar) who gives him purpose.
In an insult to anyone who ever played the American football position of center, Lang’s Coach Farris admits that it’s so easy even a blind person can do it. All you have to do is snap the ball and then become a mountain against the defense and push. It’s not easy at first (wacky montage!) but by the end Travis is ready. In fact, circumstances are such that he must be on the field to make the big winning play in the most important game of the season, and the clock is ticking, and everyone is holding their breath, and I think Travis is going to do it and, oh my God, there aren’t enough handkerchiefs in the world to sop up all my tears. Like I said, I’m not a monster.
23 Blast is directed by Dylan Baker, perhaps as a penance for the role we all still immediately associate him with – the sympathetic child rapist in Todd Solondz’s 1998 film Happiness. He doesn’t give himself too much to do in the part of the father other than to be nice. In fact, that’s kinda the working philosophy of the entire movie. Everyone is nice. (Except Timothy Busfield, the grumpy principal with the double chin who doesn’t want to let Travis play. He’s worried about – groan – law suits!) But nice doesn’t win you trophies or, in the case of movies, a good review. A shoestring budget and a decent cast can still nab you a decent film, so long as the script isn’t a simplistic disaster.
Alas, 23 Blast feels as though it is written for an audience of hard-of-hearing senior citizens who don’t much care for all these loud, dirty movies you see nowadays. A football field is rectangular, but this movie’s is hopelessly square.
