SIGHT - Mark Reviews Movies

Sight, Angel Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 23, 2024

Some opening text informs us that Sight is based on not just a true story. It's based on an "incredible true story." The story of Dr. Ming Wang, an accomplished and world-renowned eye surgeon, may very well be that sort of story, but in this movie, it's more or less reduced to flashbacks that seem less important than the movie's present-tense story.

Some of that comes down to the stakes. We know, for example, that Wang's biography will work out alright, despite the various political and economic challenges he faces during his youth.

After all, his dramatized counterpart, played by Terry Chen, is first introduced as a successful, if financially struggling, and sought-after surgeon, who has made some groundbreaking developments in the field of restoring sight to those who have lost it for assorted reasons. The tension of his past, living in China amidst the Cultural Revolution and arriving in the United States with only the dream of becoming a doctor, is essentially resolved before those biographical details even begin.

The rest of it is a matter of co-writer/director Andrew Hyatt's inability to maintain or even find a narrative rhythm to the screenplay's constant back-and-forth motion. The editing is choppy, using so many fades-to-black that the momentum constantly lulls, and the screenplay, co-written with John Duigan and Buzz McLaughlin, possesses that clichéd structure of chronology-jumping biographies, where the subject's memories come at the sight or sound of something happening in the present day. It's strange watching a man think back on his life in such particular detail while the well-being and futures of a couple patients are on the line.

Besides those pretty significant shortcomings, Wang's story is a broadly inspiring one on its face. The main issue is that, because of those issues with the telling of this story, the movie never lets us feel the impact of the main character's trials and achievements. It's too disjointed, both narratively and thematically, for that to happen.

In the story's present circa the mid-2000s, Ming is a workaholic surgeon based in Nashville. During a press conference after successfully restoring a man's sight, the doctor is cold and clinical in his assessment of what's a medical breakthrough, because there's always new research to perform and another patient waiting for what he denies to be "miraculous" results. His long-time professional partner Dr. Misha Bartnovsky (Greg Kinnear) tries to remind Ming that it's okay to feel good after a job well done, but the surgeon is all business, spending late nights at the office and continuing his work off-hours, too.

There are two big challenges awaiting Ming. The first is the case of Kajal (Mia SwamiNathan), a 6-year-old girl from India, whose mother poured sulfuric acid into the child's eyes, believing the girl's blindness might help when they're begging on the streets. She's brought to Ming by Sr. Marie (Fionnula Flanagan), whose abbey has been caring for Kajal, with the hope that this doctor, known as the best in the world for such procedures, might bring back the girl's sight.

The second is Ming being haunted by a ghost from his past in China. As the doctor examines and prepares for surgery on Kajal, he's repeatedly reminded of his childhood in his country of origin, where his parents encouraged the educational ambitions of their eldest son (played by Jayden Zhang as a youth and Ben Wang from his teenaged to young-adult years), his friendship with neighbor Lili (Kiana Luo as a child and Sara Ye as a teen), and the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution put a halt to normal life, including schooling, amidst protests, riots, and violence.

In addition to how contrived the story's structuring is, it's also ungainly in how much the screenplay attempts to cover. As a result, everything feels rushed but underdeveloped, particularly since so many of those flashbacks ultimately serve to give inspiration to the present-day Ming's work to restore Kajal's sight. There's no real sense of suspense to those scenes from the past, despite the eruption of violence several times as revolutionaries try to enlist a young Ming, and in the 2000s, Ming's medical developments seem less vital to the story than his guilt over what happened to Lili, an intermittent relationship with Anle (Danni Wang), and the spiritual lessons the doctor learns from Kajal, whose eyes might be in worse condition than the surgeon initially suspected.

Obviously, the filmmakers mean well here, and those good intentions do pay off in a way in the third act, when a climactic medical procedure—which isn't the one we anticipate—gives someone the possibility for a new kind of life and Ming's tough shell of professionalism finally cracks. That Sight pulls off such a trick, even with the inherent inconsistencies of storytelling and form that come before it, proves there's something worthwhile about Wang's story. It just deserves a better movie than this one to represent it.

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