23 Blast (2014) on Netflix
Travis Freeman is a football star and high school junior in Corbin, Kentucky. A bacterial meningitis infection puts him in the hospital, where surgery saves his life but leaves him blind.
- Netflix2.5/5
- IMDb6.5/102,716 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes36%
Trailer
Plot summary
Travis Freeman is a football star and an ordinary high school junior in Corbin, Kentucky. His parents support him, he has a girlfriend, and Jerry Baker has been his best friend since they were children. Then he begins having severe headaches, and a bacterial meningitis infection follows. Doctors operate to clear the infection and save his life. He survives the operation but loses his sight. He struggles with depression while adjusting to blindness.
Cast
Show all 14 cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about 23 Blast (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The title was pulled out of a hat: the producers had been calling the script Sight Unseen, then plucked the name 23 Blast at a dinner they attended.
- "23 Blast" is a football play, and in the 1967 UCLA vs. USC game it was the audible run called for O. J. Simpson's 64-yard game-winning touchdown.
- Travis Freeman, the Corbin, Kentucky teenager whose life inspired the film, was twelve when severe headaches and a sinus infection, cavernous sinus thrombosis, led to surgery that succeeded but left him blind.
- The live football hits in the film were performed by the Cincinnati Bulldogs, a semi-professional team from Cincinnati, Ohio.
- The game sequences were shot at night so extras stayed overnight, and the local University of the Cumberlands players used often left set at 5:30 am in order to make 6 am weight training.
- A church scene was added late in production and, at the request of the real Freeman family, was shot at their own church, Central Baptist Church.
- Dylan Baker used his personal network to cast the film, giving his wife Becky Ann Baker the role of Patty Wheatley and making Stephen Lang, known for playing unlikable men, his first choice for Coach Willard Farris; Bram Hoover, first slated to play Travis, was recast as Jerry.
- Kim Zimmer was first cast as Molly's mother, a role that was cut from the final film, and was then recast as Travis's mother, Mary Freeman.
