Blade Runner [Director's Cut]

Rating:
Summary: The best film ever made
Review: Some people say it's The Godfather. Some say it's Citizen Kane. Some say its Jaws, or Godfather 2, or Casablanca, or even Its a Wonderful Life. Good movies? Sure. But Blade Runner is more than a movie. It's an experience, a vision of a nightmarish future with brilliant special effects and deep, deep insight on humanity itself. Almost none of the films on AFI's list fit this. Blade Runner is an overlooked masterpiece, often regarded by critics as "just are sci-fi movies about a guy hunting androids." It's much more than that.
The special effects are some of the best ever.
The "villain's" final speech (tears in rain) is one of the most memorable ever.
The combination of 40s noir and futuristic imagery is nothing ever seen on film.
Everyone in the cast gives an excellent performance.
It simply has the best camerawork, set design, and production design of any film (OK maybe Scott's other masterpiece, Alien, is just as good)
So why not add this baby to the AFI list? It's clearly a well-liked movie internationally. It's time it's given the proper respect.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps the most underrated work of art
Review: BLADE RUNNER,the title alone inspires awe,feast for the eyes,ears..the magnetic HARRISON FORD..directed by the equally magnetic RIDLEY SCOTT...a time when science fiction from GEORGE LUCAS,STEVEN SPIELBERG,AND MR.SCOTT revolutinized filmmaking,not just genres..the art of moving pictures themselves....every frame..sound, cue of VANGELIS' beautiful score...stunning....every film since, that catgorizes themselves as science fiction ,wants to be BLADE RUNNER,or STAR WARS,or ALIEN,all fail because those films are art....the rest are movies..ITS THAT SIMPLE....

Rating:
Summary: My favorite SciFi movie...
Review: This has got to be one of the best SciFi movies of all time. But what makes it so good?! My opinion is that Harrison Ford makes it so good. He is 100% in character in Blade Runner as a tough but reluctant replicant hunter.

Another thing I like is the way you can almost feel sorry for the replicants. They didn't have a choice in their fate and they seem to have a legitimate reason for the havoc they are creating. The end of the fight scene between H. Ford and R. Hauer (when the replicant dies) always chokes me up.

I could go on for a long time on this one... but the bottom line is:

Blade Runner has set the mark by which all other SciFi films will be judged for a long time.

Rating:
Summary: One of Ridley's best !
Review: This is such a triumph for a science fiction film. Such imagination that started the wave of other science fiction knock-offs. This is the type of film that you could watch over and over again and always notice something new. The future world that was created here is almost scary in how realistic it may be. The grittyness, the commercialism and of course the super humans. I did not enjoy this only because of it's visual feats but the story and acting were superb. I've always been a fan of Harrison Ford and this is propably a more physical role than for him than Indiana Jones was. Other Ridley Scott recomendations: White Squall, Gladiator & Hannibal.

Rating:
Summary: PURE AND ORIGINAL DARK POETRY
Review: One has to remember how sci-fi movies were made and ambiented, their colours and the stories canned in them, before this one, in order to understand the importance and historical impact of the masterpiece by Ridley Scott. This is a movie to be seen by all, including those not really into sci-fi. No serious pictures about the future of mankind made after this one, can escape the influence of the dark city portraited in Blade Runner. Not only some very original effects for the time, but also the mood that Vangelis provokes through his musical score, set the rigth place and time to unfold a moving tale about human and nonhuman misery and redemption. This is a place and time were humans kill replicants that were created by them to serve, but not to live on earth or live in full. Replicants that are not supposed to feel, love or despair. But they do, and how.
I can hardly think of a more stirring and moving scene in a picture, than the one in which the last standing "bad" replicant (portraited by Hauer)does not do what humans thinks a replicant would do (kill Harrison, the hunter that has just liquidated his beloved one) but instead teaches us all a lesson about the value of life and compassion. If the final speech
that he makes doesn't represent poetry in motion to you, then maybe you didn't deserve to see this wonderful art act.

Rating:
Summary: Man and Replicant
Review: Harrison Ford is Deckard, a police detective specially assigned hunt down rogue androids called replicants. Consequential innovations of a distant future (actually 2019, and we're past the halfway point between that date and this flick's initial release), replicants are so apparently human, only the detectives called Blade Runners can spot and retire them. Deckard actually hs a lot in common with his victims - after years of chasing androids down, Deckard has become something colder than human (his wife, Deckard told us in the original studio cut, compared him to sushi - a cold fish) and is a retiree himself when first asked to take one more case. Long disillusioned, Deckard allows his ex-boss, a bloated bigot named Bryant (Emmet Walsh) to bad-cop him into hunting down a batch of especially dangerous military replicants called Nexus-6 and led by android Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer). Though few replicants even attempt to return to Earth where they are anyway outlawed the band led by Batty return not only to Earth, but attempt to break into the factory that developed them. (A fellow Blade Runner is critically wounded when crossing paths with one of the band disguised as a factory worker.) Though long disenchanted with a job that had him killing the human-like machines, Deckard outwardly maintains that replicants really are machines either a benefit or a hazard. Only Deckard's love for the sad Rachel (Sean Young), an android who is slowly realizing that she is not human, forces him to change his perspective. (Most of the film has Deckard falling for Rachel, keeping him one step behind the androids themselves). Batty closes in on a meeting with his maker - the founding engineer of Tyrell corporation, a sort of aloof and godlike character who lives in a room looking like one in the Vatican apartments and set inside of a building looking like a huge Aztec pyramid. Meanwhile, Deckard works to catch-up with Batty while staying one-step ahead of another Blade Runner, Gaff (Edward James Olmos) who is gunning for Rachel. The Androids are programmed to die after 4 years a measure designed, less to protect humans from the replicants violent streak than merely prevent the machines from attaining human-like emotional states. One-by-one, Deckard tracks down each of the replicants and, after withstanding a bruising to his body and soul, kills them. With the death of Batty, Deckard's conversion is complete he can never hunt again, nor can he remain in the dark and doomed city that was his hunting ground.

WHY THIS MOVIE IS OVERBLOWN. Blade Runner was an early attempt at sci-fi high concept the crossing over of two genres, in this case, sci-fi with 1940's film noir, but it opened in 1982 alongside the film-noir spoof "Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid" both films featuring voice-overs by stars with similar sounding voices (Steve Martin and Harrison Ford). The city-scape of the Los Angeles of the future looks fully-realized, complete with flying cars, industrial smoke stacks, giant bill-boards and gouges of flame, but much of the drama is personal the elaborate special effects seldom becoming little more than eye-candy (though sumptuous). Down-to-Earth exteriors, while frenetic and crowded, never look more than incredibly detailed soundstages. (The billboards hawking Pan-Am and Atari as well as a general atmosphere that presumes a modern culture stemming from the economic dominance of Pacific-rim industrial power are amusingly dated). The smoky interior effects and junk-technology in movies like this and Alien, though elaborate, gave rise to the now prevailing futurism which simply relies on cheesy camera-work and second-hand set design. (In classic sci-fi, the future is the clean, orderly and largely tax-free result of human pluck that survived some vaguely catastrophic event occurring shortly after whatever book or film its set in.) The Director's cut is better in some spots than the '82 wide release version, but falls in others. The voice overs of the 82' cut were weak (though the "sushi" line was priceless), but eliminating them here only exposes the weak narrative of original. The new version also jettisons the optimism-tinged ending (complete with aerial shots ripped from "The Shining"), but adds in dream sequences filled with unicorns, suggesting the fairy tale "Legend". (The interior sets, atmosphere and Vangelis score also suggest that film, making it hard to remember that that movie actually followed "Runner" rathern than preceding it).

WHY YOU MUST STILL SEE IT: Besides its larger warning of a future as being a bleak era scarred by evils prevalent today (corporate governance, ecological disintegration and dehumanizing technology) "Runner" is also a film with unforgettable characters. While Deckard is remote, your heart will be broken by Rachel and the even the murderous Batty. Despite the death he inflicts or hints at in almost every scene he's in, the script wisely keeps Batty soft-spoken to the point of being a child (Gosh, you've... really got some nice toys here), rewarding him with a christ-like death scene sure to tug at your heartstrings. I still don't know what C-Beams are, but it's a moment in Batty's life which will die with him, and that's the painful thing. The flick tanked largely (cultists claimed) because of a studio-ordered cut adding an upbeat ending and the off-camera narration by Harrison Ford. Those studio-execs never get respect. Catching the Director's Cut in 92, I realized that those studio execs took the fall for a film with an irreparably poor narrative, one so limited, that fans can debate such nonsensical ideas like whether Deckard himself is an android. If that were true, the moral of the film (warning of machines becoming more human than those who build and use them) would be pointless. Instead, Deckards story is of a man once forced to become something like a machine, and now given a last chance to find his way back. You should also catch Runner because of its dated vision, catching those aspects of the film that weren't ahead of their time, but are rooted to a more innocent age flying cars, Pan-Am and early 80's synthesized score courtesy of Vangelis.

Rating:
Summary: My all-time favorite movie......
Review: A person always has an all-time favorite movie that they have watched so many times that they can almost lip-sync the dialogue. Blade Runner is MY all time favorite. The music is haunting and the plot.... although a bit un-nerving.... is believable. Will we end up like the Earth portrayed in the movie? Certainly we are heading that way with the extermination of animals in the wild. Will there come a time when what we call "robots" will be as human-like as those in the movie? Who knows. Will the climate on earth become as rotten as seen in the movie? Will people leave Earth to find a better life? SO many questions were raised in this movie. I thought that the directors cut was vastly inferior to the original verson with Ford's voice-over explanation.... and I have a copy of both versions. One of the most intricate and disturbing movie plots ever done. I LIKE it!

Rating:
Summary: If Blade Runner isn't five stars, what is?
Review: After Antonioni's Blow-Up, Blade Runner is my favorite film. The special effects are dated (no CGI) and the film editing is staid (compared to, say, "Matrix"). But compared to the Star War prequels, it does illustrate how to integrate the special effects into the movie instead of the movie into the special effects. I mean the actors actually seem to know where they are standing.

While Blade Runner, like Blow-Up, can be appreciated as a genre film, consider Blade Runner as a meditation on what it means to be fully human (first recognize that, if we are not born human, then we must become human through experience and/or empathy). Art conceals art here.

Film as an art form fascinates me because it alone marries the visual image moving through time with musical notes moving through time (if you mention opera here I'm going to mention all the options provided by film editing and music editing and not even bother to mention the fat lady). Few directors have understood this as thoroughly or exploited this as effectively as Ridley Scott. Films are, for me, a sensory and therefore sensual medium. If a film does not please my eyes and ears, intellectual gimmicks remain just gimmicks (think Memento here). A film, like a painting, must have a presence (forget Heidegger and just think of presence as charisma) that attracts and holds my attention by its appeal to my senses. Possibly because Scott started out in commercials, he is an expert at attracting and holding attention, at creating a film with presence. (Hey, if it looks good and sounds good and transcends itself with story and theme, maybe it is good. Lose the critical theory like Dogme 95. Do I care if it is a hot or cold camera? No, I only care that it works as a film.)

It surprises me that few reviewers here have mentioned the innovative Vangelis score and the years it took before it was released as a CD.

Rating:
Summary: Director's cut is all wrong
Review: Blade Runner, as it was original shown, is a Maltese Falcon set in the future. The Director's Cut, however, is a sci-fi Hitchcock thriller. While the Director's Cut is still visually fascinating and taps into some of the same themes, the actuall movie Blade Runner is an infinitely fascinating take on the original black and white film-noir genre and how Sam Spade would fit inside a future world. If you've never seen either version, I would say get this DVD and watch it today, but I really wish that Ridley Scott would allow the original and much more intelligent thought provoking 1983 Blade Runner to come back.

Rating:
Summary: A Unforgettable view of the future.
Review: Ridley Scott's classic Science Fiction Thriller is set in
L.A. in the near future, a Detective named Deckard is after
ruthless Cyborg Criminals. Intriging, exciting and marvelous
with the special effects and story line.