Blade Runner

9/10  - Directed by Ridley Scott - 1982 - 110 minutes

In a world obsessed with the fate of humanity, Blade Runner suggests a terrifying future. The world of Ridley Scott’s most imaginative film is one infected by apathy and greed, where every aspect of life is commodified and the overreach in scientific curiosity has spawned a new, even more disturbing moral question. 

Blade Runner, an adaptation of Philip K Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, is set in Scott’s dystopian concept of Los Angeles in the year 2019 and follows Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a cynical former police officer who is forced out of retirement to once again step into the role known as a “blade runner.” As a blade runner, Deckard hunts genetically engineered, artificial humans known as “replicants.” Replicants are manufactured and designed by the eccentric and malicious genius Eldon Tyrell and the Tyrell corporation. Tyrell’s latest creation, the Nexus 6 replicant, is outlawed on Earth but still used for slave labor throughout the extraterrestrial colonies. As Deckard follows the trail of escaped replicants Roy, Leon, Pris and Zhora, his investigations and relationship with Tyrell’s assistant Rachael (revealed to be a replicant with experimental artificial memories, initially unbeknownst to her) unravel the amoral nature of the replicant’s creation and four year lifespan along with the greater question of what makes a being human. Other than a problematic and entirely unnecessary encounter between Rachael (Sean Young) and Deckard, the screenplay of Hampton Fancher and David Peoples is stunning in both worldbuilding and its insight in the condition of humanity. The detailed world of Blade Runner is a reflection of our own fears, not only about the threat our creations pose but the ethical threat humans pose to each other. 

Blade Runner is ultimately set apart from its peers in both era and genre because of the skill with which Scott, the cast, and the crew approached a rather massive project in terms of both complexity of story and sheer visual spectacle. The scale of the setting and atmosphere in Blade Runner is almost overwhelming, particularly considering Scott’s futuristic, hyper consumerist Los Angeles, which is in itself a brilliant and stunningly detailed work of cinematic art. I would even venture to say that the sets and miniatures of Blade Runner (particularly the likes of the Tyrell Corporation building and billboard clad streets, alleys and hovercraft lanes of LA) have the finest atmospheric lighting I have ever seen. It’s a welcome example of a full story-setting immersion in which the story ceases to exist as its own entity and is actually absorbed into the world created for it. Beyond the impossibly bright neon signs and the lurid colors of huge Coca Cola billboards, Blade Runner projects the piercing vision of a grim, corroding capitalist future in which artificial humans are made in tubes for personal property and women on huge screens inundate you with shiny dreams of off world fortune and glamor. It’s a film full of touching performances, but I would be remiss if I didn’t applaud Sean Young’s portrayal of Rachael, who powerfully embodies coming to terms with manipulated realities and embracing your own humanity. Ford’s acting is as gruff and cynical as you may expect, but Rutger Hauer as Roy Batty, the leader of the replicant gang, delivers a tour de force performance that is perpetually strange, occasionally even camp, and in a broader sense heartbreakingly human. Blade Runner is more than the aesthetic godfather of cyberpunk, it’s the vibrant and prophetic crown jewel of 1980’s sci fi.