They say that truth is stranger than fiction and in the case of The Blind Side, that is certainly true. Had the book and the film been a work of fiction, we all would have rolled our eyes and said, you’ve got to be kidding me! What a tall tail! However, die to the confluence of too many improbable circumstances to count, The Blind Side is true. While it is a an enjoyable film featuring several wonderful performances, the question to be answered today is how well does it look and sound on Blu-ray? I guess you will just have to keep on reading.

Film 

The Blind Side is a wonderfully written and directed film that can best be described as uplifting and a tad sentimental. Call me an old softie, but I really enjoyed The Blind Side. Perhaps is was due to fact that football is prominently featured in the film. I, on the other hand, would prefer to think that it is the script, the story and the performances that had more to do with it! T

The Blind Side tells the true life story of Michael Oher who was able to escape the ghetto in Memphis, attend a Christian private school with little in the way of a formal education, and with the help of the Tuohy family, graduate school and attend Ole Miss on a football scholarship, become an All-America left tackle and a first round draft choice of the Baltimore Ravens.

While there is a lot going on in the film, the film focuses on two main characters, Michael Oher (played by newcomer Quinton Aaron) and the real star of the film, Leah Anne Tuohy, wonderfully played by Sandra Bullock, which earned her the Oscar for Best Actress. While Michael is a very large and very quiet man, it is the character of Leigh Anne that really takes up the most screen space. She is quite a character, a gun toting, evangelical Christian woman who is about as sassy and confident as they come, a real pistol you might say.

It is clear from the extras that Sandra Bullock captured Leigh Anne’s persona perfectly. Whether her performance was worthy of the Oscar is up for debate, at least in my eyes. Regardless, her performance is wonderful and the highlight of the film, along with the performance of Jae Head as Leigh Anne’s young son S.J, who is a real chip off the Leigh Anne block.

The film quickly introduces us to Michael and his travails at school, from his lack of parents, to a lack of clothing and him essentially living on the streets. Leigh Anne sees him and invites him into their home and feeds and clothes him and provides him with what he has never had before, a home and a family. With her help and the help of the rest of the family and a full time tutor Miss Sue (Cathy Bates), he is able to pull his weight at school, and earn a full scholarship to Ole Miss. The rest as they say, is history.

The film is based on the book by Michael Lewis of Money ball fame. The director John Lee Hancock was able to distill the essence of the book into a wonderfully warm, moving and inspirational film that is well worth a look.

Video 

The best way I can describe the video here is solid if unspectacular. The film features a bright and warm color palette that is a bit too warm for my tastes, especially the skin tons which are a bit too golden and tan for my tastes. However, this is how the film looked in the theater and is reproduced perfectly in this encode. Blacks are deep, stable and inky.

Clarity and detail are good but far from reference. The close-ups in the film look great with a sharp and detailed picture. It is the distant shots and dimly lit shots which are a bit soft and lacking in detail, looking a bit fuzzy in comparison with the close-ups. On the plus side, I was not able to detect any obvious evidence of the application of edge enhancement or digital noise reduction. Technically, this appears to be an excellent encode that faithfully captures how the film looked in the theater which, when you come right down to it, is all that we can really ask.

Audio 

As was the case with the video, I would have to describe the audio or at least the sound design of The Blind Side as good but not spectacular. I have two main quibbles with the sound. The first is a bit of overall brightness which while minimal is still noticeable on revealing equipment. The second is the sound design which is a little too front heavy for my tastes. While the surrounds are active throughout the film, they are rather subtle for the most part, with two exceptions, the football game sequences and the car crash scene all of which had excellent dynamics, heft and punch sounding quite realistic.

The dialogue track is well recorded and well placed in the mix and is always intelligible. With a smoother richer sound and a more aggressive use of the surrounds, the sound on this release would have earned a higher score, but as they say, “It is what it is” and worthy of 4 stars out of 5.

Special Features 

I must say that I enjoyed the extras here more than normal, perhaps because of the interview of the real Leigh Anne Tuohy conducted by Sandra Bullock. While the interview segments are brief, they really provide you with an insight into just who Leigh Anne Tuohy is and exactly how well Sandra Bullock captured her in the film. The release contains two discs, the first being the Blu-ray version of the film and the second, a DVD combo disc, containing a DVD copy of the film along with a digital copy compatible with all portable media devices.

The extras include several featurettes including “Acting Coaches: Behind the Blind Side” which feature interviews with the several college football coaches featured in the film, including Phillip Fulmer formally of Tennessee. Lou Holtz then of South Carolina, Nick Saban, then of LSU, Tommy Tuberville of Auburn, Houston Nutt then of Arkansas and Ed Orgeron of Ole Miss.

Also included is a featurette “The Story of Big Quinton” which details how Quinton Aaron was selected for the role of Michael Oher. There are several short interviews broken down into different topics between Sandra Bullock and Leigh Anne Tuohy as well as screen writer and director John Lee Hancock and author Michel Lewis. I found each of these segments to be very informative and well worth your time.

We also get an interview with the real Michael Oher as well as a few deleted scenes. All of the extras are presented in high definition and look quite good.

Final Thoughts 

The Blind Side is a wonderfully warm and inspiring film that features an excellent Oscar winning performance by Sandra Bullock and is well worth a look. Highly recommended.