BLIND FURY is based on the series of Japanese movies made during the 1960s that featured Zatoichi, a wandering blind swordfighter. Updated and Americanized by scriptwriter Charles Robert Carner and director Phillip Noyce, Zatoichi is now Nick Parker (Rutger Hauer), a soldier blinded in action in the Vietnam War and nursed back to health by Vietnamese villagers. Nick develops an acute sense of hearing and, in spite of his disability, becomes a master swordsman--all during the opening credits.

BLIND FURY retains the mixture of humor, violence, and sentiment that characterized the original films. Left in charge of young Billy Devereaux (Brandon Call) after the death of his mother, Nick takes Billy across the United States by bus. However, the pair is menaced by overwhelming numbers of vicious thugs led by Slag (Randall "Tex" Cobb, who plays the bounty hunter in the Coen brothers' RAISING ARIZONA) on the journey. Nick, of course, handles these predicaments with casual skill, luck, good humor, and his trusty hidden samurai sword.