It's a rattling, heartrending performance (Moore) in, yes, a long, hard slough of a film – one that is well worth the journey, if not a repeat trip.

It engaged me throughout and I found the ending to be surprisingly hopeful.

Moore is always watchable, Ruffalo and Bernal get a nice rivalry going without ever establishing eye contact (as it were), and Danny Glover has some nice moments in an underdeveloped part as an older man who finds, to his benefit, that love is blind.

As the players enact the fall and rebirth of civilization, Meirelles suggests that even a society gone to hell looks better with a little music-video-like pizzazz.

Blindness is provocative cinema. But it also is predictable cinema: It startles but does not surprise.