The Ticket

In Ido Fluk's The Ticket, the miraculous restoration of one man's blindness becomes a metaphor for a destructive kind of all-American tunnel vision. If blindness taught James Harvey (Dan Stevens) humility, being able to see again quickly transforms him into an egotistical monster chasing after purely material success. Thus, on his way to the top of the ranks at his real-estate firm, he leaves his wife Sam (Malin Akerman) for sexy co-worker Jessica (Kerry Bishé) while carelessly stomping on the affections of his blind colleague/friend Bob (Oliver Platt).

Fluk barely seems interested in James as a character beyond painting him as an Icarus-like totem, flying too high in a simplistic morality play. Without the nuances to give him convincing human dimension, James' inevitable fall and attendant ineffectual attempts at redemption inspire little more than a contemptuous "too little, too late" shrug.

If Fluk's film has any impact at all, much of it is thanks to Dan Stevens, who brings an empathy to James that occasionally complicates the director/co-writer's two-dimensional view of the character. Fluk also begins and ends The Ticket with imaginative visualizations of James' blindness, his disability presented onscreen as a disorienting series of blurry colors and sensations, with the sound design more vividly heightened than usual. In these abstract sequences, Fluk evinces a desire to explore an inner life that he otherwise forsakes for easy moralizing.