Blade Runner

Blade Runner; science-fiction film noir, USA, 1982; D: Ridley Scott, S: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos, William Sanderson, M. Emmet Walsh, Joe Turkel, Joanna Cassidy, James Hong

Los Angeles, 2019. Rick Deckard of the LAPD's Blade Runner gets a new assignment: he has to eliminate five replicants, artificially created humans, that manged to escape from a colony and land on Earth, searching for answers about their lives from their "creator" Tyrell, the CEO of a corporation that creates artifical humans. Replicants were declared illegal a long time ago and are to be terminated upon detection on Earth. In his pursuit, Deckard falls in love with Racheal, who is also a replicant. After a big showdown, Deckard attempts to escape from the roof and ends up hanging from a beam. Roy Beatty, the leader of the replicants, saves his life and dies, since his four-year life span has ended. Deckard leaves the city with Rachael.

Some films are so good that the critics who see them have to raise their criteria towards rating all other films. "Blade Runner" is one of these films, a Sci-Fi film noir so great that almost every other film in the genre after it tried to copy its style. "Blade Runner's" design and look are very extravagant and remind of some futuristic anime, yet its main virtue is that the story actually has a soul—the core of the film is actually a touching drama about understanding between two different groups and a debate about why one should be considered superior than the other. Or that there will always be a need for an order where a lower class will have to do difficult tasks for the upper class. In a way it is actually an allegorical anti-discrimination statement—if the replicants have the exact same emotions as the humans, why should they be considered different, as non-human slaves? When Deckard falls in love with Rachael, is that love meaningless since she is a replicant and not a real woman? If a computer would be given artificial intelligence—and then a full consciousness—and then a robotic body—and then an organic, human body—when would the border between between a human and an AI disappear?

Actually, the replicants in some scenes prove to be more human than humans themselves, and their journey is a quest to gain equal rights as humans, and to confront their "creator", Tyrell, but who has no satisfaying answers for them—they were created to be a commodity, not to be humans with feelings. Ridley Scott directed a few great films, but this is his magnum opus. Basically, the film is actually pretty thin —not much happens, it is all style over substance—but that is all it needs. It is reduced to its essence. It has flaws (for instance, Rachael appears in only four sequences and could have used better character development; the too convenient way Pris stumbles into Sebastian...), but when a movie's concept is done right, it can have a hundred flaws and it won't matter. Equipped with some magical scenes that give chills (one of them is Roy's final dialogue, about how he has seen things "people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain", before releasing a dove, his soul, from his hands; the other one being Deckard's dream of an Unicorn present only in the '92 Director's Cut), a strange design that creates beautiful aesthetics from the looks of the ugly town of the future, esoteric mood, in which Harrison Ford's acting is actually the least memorable thing, "Blade Runner" is a shining philosophical film that gets better with age.

Grade:+++