Blade Runner
Released in 1982, this is one of the best science fiction films ever (and that's not just my opinion, film critics agree). The year is 2019 and Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) is a Blade Runner (or at least he used to be). Blade Runners are police officers charged with hunting down Replicants (bio-engineered androids that only have a 4 year life span, enhanced physical strength and abilities) and "retiring" them. Replicants are not permitted on Earth (must be a huge problem if they have a team of dedicated police officers just to deal with this problem) and a group of four Replicants have come to Earth seeking a way to extend their lives. Deckard gets "talked into" (*threatened into) coming back by his old boss to hunt this group down.
The entire plot line would take me several pages to type out, and I assume most people have seen this film (or at least they should have!!) so I won't go that deep. But lets talk about the look of this film. Its dark, its gritty, its not bright and shiny. The future does not look like a fun place to be....(only three years away from when I'm writing this post)..but it has a retro look that caught the imagination. It has an air about it that draws you in but repels you at the same time. It's a futuristic world but its grounded with its familiarity, cars still ply the streets, pedestrians still need to get across the street, the local food stand still gets your noddle order wrong. It's the Replicants that pull us into the future. Created as slave labor on off-world colonies, they inspire fear because of their enhancements.
The film asks a lot of questions that are open to as many conclusions as their are fans of this film. Consider the idea that Deckard may be a Replicant. Is the film a warning about big corporations? What about the idea of humans fearing the technology they've created? And why does Harrison Ford always get his ass kicked? (in this case by all four Replicants)
In the end, its about wanting to feel human and to connect to the things that make us human....our memories and our relationships. The leader of the group of Replicants, Roy (played by Rutger Hauer) has a wonderful monologue at the end of the film, which was written by Rutger the day before the scene was filmed. I'm including the scene below because its a great piece of film making.
Before I do that, I'm going to take a moment to talk about the many versions of the film that have been released over the years. By some accounts, there are as many as seven versions of the film. In its originally released version, there was a voice over through out the film by Harrison Ford (he hated the voice over) that explained what we were seeing and what the characters were thinking....which is...ok but having seen the film now with several scenes added back in and with the voice over removed, the Final Cut as released in 2007, really presents the film as something that allows the viewer to decide for them selves what they feel the answers are. The scene below gets lost when the voice over cuts across the moment as Deckard sits and watches the last minutes of Roy's life. With out the voice over, the scene is allowed to impact the viewer just as the actors wanted it to. Thankfully we have the film as the actors and director intended. Seek that version out. Its worth the effort.
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