Any film that starts out with a detailed video breakdown of the play in which NFL legend Lawrence Taylor snapped legend Joe Theismann’s fibula with a routine quarterback sack has got some moxie.  And when the commentary and strategic analysis is provided by a Southern woman, well, you’ve pretty much got to sit up and take notice.

On the surface, The Blind Side presents the true story of NFL rookie and first-round draft pick Michael Oher, a chronic foster-home Memphis runaway and underachiever who, beyond all odds, finds himself attending an exclusive private Christian school—and is then plucked out of homelessness by a well-to-do interior decorator and her entrepreneur husband.  The problem?  Well, this is Memphis, and Oher is black; Leigh Anne Tuohy and her family are as about as white as you get.

But as the opening and closing sequences of the film demonstrate, the film is not really about Oher; it’s about Tuohy, a mold-breaking Miss Firecracker who would embrace only the unbending portions of a steel magnolia.  So we can dispense with objections that this is a black man’s story which has been co-opted by white storytellers—if the filmmakers are to be believed, and I believe they can be.  According to director John Lee Hancock, the real-life Oher hadn’t even seen the film as of a couple of weeks ago, and hadn’t asked to.  He’s really not concerned with his story being told.

Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, on the hand, are very much concerned with how their story is being told, and participated closely not only with the film’s production, but with the writing of the book on which the film is based—and the press tours supporting the film’s release.  The Tuohys are bona fide larger-than-life characters, and a career-best performance from Sandra Bullock as the largest-looming half of the duo is the lynch-pin upon which the success of this film is hung.

To understand Leigh Anne Tuohy, however, takes a Michael Oher.  Tuohy is a dynamo, to be sure; but what really defines her is not her energy; it’s her sense of what is right.  When she understands that Oher is on his way to spend a cold and wet night sleeping outside the school gym, she knows that the right thing to do is to take the boy in; and she does.  When she learns that the state is perfectly willing to let Oher become an adoptee without bothering to learn the whereabouts of his birth mother, she knows the right thing to do is track her down; and she invests the time and energy to do so, winning the mother’s consent and gratitude.  When it’s obvious that Oher’s football coach sees raw potential in him but doesn’t understand what makes him tick, Tuohy’s insights provide the foundation for Oher’s meteoric rise to football superstardom.  When “rednecks,” gangstas, or racist socialites try to put her (or Oher) “in their place,” Tuohy will have absolutely none of it.  Like Lawrence Taylor, Joe Theismann, or Michael Oher himself, Leigh Anne Tuohy is a game-changer.

Oher is the key to unlocking that understanding because the two share so many characteristics, as Hancock related in my interview with him.  Hancock elects to use imagery rather than mere words to demonstrate the parallels, initially presenting both Oher and Tuohy as specimens under glass and only gradually releasing them as each learns that seclusion is not the only option for processing emotion.  As Oher finally achieves emotional maturity, so also does Tuohy.

There are so many things the film does right: opting for cinematic simplicity over showy camera work; recognizing that this is not a story which requires a climactic “big game” and knowing, in fact, that this is not a sports film at all; making no bones about the Tuohy’s Christian faith without wielding it like a bat; and making no attempt to whitewash hypocrisy where it exists.  And yet it is not a perfect film, or even a great one.  I struggled hard trying to decide how many words to allocate to faults and how many to praise, and decided finally that the strengths of the film far outweigh its demerits.

So I won’t guarantee you’ll like this film; in fact, if you’ve already seen it you’ll probably wonder why I didn’t mention one or more of your own quibbles.  That’s fair.  But I figure the film will draw enough flak from black activists, Christian social conservatives, racists, and bad-natured free-thinkers that I don’t need to add my voice to that chorus.  The Blind Side could be better, but it sure feels like a breath of fresh air to me.

The Blind Side is rated PG-13 for “one scene involving brief violence, drug and sexual references.”  That’s fair.  I actually think most kids would be totally okay with just about everything in this film, though Leigh Anne Tuohy is indeed very frank in her speech.

Courtesy of the film’s distributor, attended a promotional screening of The Blind Side at a press junket in Los Angeles.