Blindsided: the Game is a 2018 action film by Jacobus Barber Productions, starring Eric Jacobus as Walter, a blind man who loves his apple pie. When a local store-owner Gordon is shaken down by a group of thugs, Walter is nearby, and steps in to fend off the thugs. Unfortunately, Gordon owes money to Sal, a lot of money, and they're not going to take no for an answer. Walter is forced to get more involved, and the question keeps coming up, who is this blind man?
An expansion of the 2016 twelve minute short film
, the movie is available on Youtube and has an offical website.
The film exhibits the following tropes:
- Blind Weaponmaster: Walter wields his cane with great precision, and later reveals he has a knife in the top. In the second half of the film, he carries a Sword Cane.
- Cane Fu: Early on, Walter uses his white cane as a weapon. Eric acknowledged in the notes for the original short that an actual folding cane would be too flimsy to use as a weapon, so a solid weapon was substituted for any part of the fight scene which required it to be used for striking or blocking.
- Dual Wielding: Walter frequently wields a blade in one hand and a cane, or the scabbard of his Sword Cane, in the off hand. Ace, Sal's dealer, wields two knives, one in a standard grip and one in a Reverse Grip.
- Ear Ache: After a mook goes for a gun after being told not to, Walter slices his ear off and tells him he "should have listened".
- Expy: Walter shares some similarities with Zatoichi, including a very similar Sword Cane for the second act.
- Fingore: Walter reacts to Nico holding him and Gordon at gunpoint by drawing his sword and slicing off Nico's finger. Poor Nico never gets it reattached. Walter does apologize for it later.
- Funny Background Event: Several of the paintings in Walter's house are upside-down.
- Handicapped Badass: Walter is seemingly thoroughly blind, to the point where he at one point doesn't notice someone standing quietly in the room, walking up right beside them. That said, he can still hold his own in a fight.
- Just in Time: Just when Walter is seemingly caught at gunpoint by Sal at the end of the film, Gordon shows up and holds Sal at gunpoint.
- The Magic Poker Equation: Walter challenges Sal to a game of poker with the intent being to win enough money for Gordon's debt. He wins in part due to reading Sal's audible tell of jiggling his feet, partly through catching Ace, the dealer, trying to deal from the bottom to give Sal the winning hand, and partly by having the sheer luck to get a flush. Otherwise, the game is relatively realistic with the players never getting more than a pair until the final hand, and occasionally having nothing.
- Mysterious Past: Walter is far too accustomed to violence to not have some kind of history in his background, and he has a box of keepsakes, including his Sword Cane, under his bed. Several characters speculate on who he might be, but the answer is never revealed.
- Senseless Phagia: Walter, being blind, fails to see that the milk has gone visibly bad, resulting in him spraying sour milk over the table and the apple pie on it. He then proceeds to grope for a bottle of water in the refrigerator and instead grabs the bottle of hot sauce... this leads to the event which kicks off the plot, when Walter goes to Gordon's shop to get more apples for another pie.
- Shoutout: One of the background characters is reading the newspaper from "Rope-A-Dope" with the headline about the dangers of the "Martial Arts Mafia".
- Sword Cane: Walter wields a Shikomizue for the second act of the film which he also uses as a cane to sound out his environment.
