According to the producers of At First Sight there have only been 20 cases of sight being restored to a person in the last 200 years. The film tells the story of one of them based on the casebooks of Dr. Oliver Sacks. Val Kilmer plays Virgil a blind masseur in a Hudson River town... Amy - Mira Sorvino - is a talented architect from New York. They meet when she escapes from the stresses of her work and life for a week`s break. And fall in love. Amy feels that a whole new world opens to her through the senses that Virgil shares with her. When she hears of radical new surgery that could perhaps restore Virgil`s sight she convinces him to pursue it... with unexpected consequences...After a lifetime of blindness Virgil can`t interpret what he can now see. This element of the film is the most interesting... but on other levels the film is less satisfactory.
The screenplay by Steve Levitt, his first produced feature, is cliche ridden and not helped by Irwin Winkler`s rather unleavened direction. Amy is pretty much forgotten in the development of Virgil`s emotional journey but the filmmakers also fail to connect us with Virgil on any real level, and as played by Val Kilmer he comes across as a narcissistic egotist...David`s Comment:
A true story which has been glamorised, sentimentalised and Hollywoodised. Mira Sorvino adds nothing to her reputation, and Val Kilmer is hard to take in the central role. The film is particularly irritating because you get the impression that the real story would have been quite fascinating. Some solid supporting players (Bruce Davison, Kelly McGillis).
