Blade Runner

For a film globetrotter like me, It's nice to come home sometimes...
 

Daryll

I swear when it's time for flying cars, this'll be what they look like. 

What's good Film Noir without an awkward love scene?

Last updated: 2010-05-16 11:36:20 by user07

There IS no spoon!

Last updated: 2010-03-13 06:28:35 by McDozer

Is a movie great if it looks great? There aren’t many great movies that don’t look great, but how much wrong-decision do good looks buy?Blade Runner is known as a great movie predominately because it invented a look for the future. And no question, it has to be the best looking sci-fi movie of all time. But y’know, there’s a lot about Blade Runner that doesn’t work. I know it might be heresy to say this but… the love story sucks, the pacing is off, and Sean Young is robotic, even for a robot. So are good looks enough? I think of Wong Kar Wai’s 2046(another handsome, robots and cigarettes movie). My god I hated2046. Is Blade Runner any better?

In the year 2019 (as imagined from 1982, and even then – they were reaching) mankind has largely decamped Earth and robots are used as slave labour. For reasons that are never entirely explained: robots live only four years; are forbidden from setting foot on Earth and are routinely implanted with fake memories of childhood (to make a four year life-span more bearable). These robots are not like Robbie the Robot or Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still; they look human. Four of them decide to risk coming to Earth to meet their maker, the robot designer Eldon Tyrell. They “want more life”. Harrison Ford, a “blade runner” (or robot killer), is sent to hunt them down.

2046 might seem like a strange comparison to make when discussingBlade Runner, but I can’t think of another recent movie that has B.R.’s ennui. To think what the film studio must have thought: that this was supposed to be a thriller (Han Solo vs. The Terminator!) You never get any sense that Ford is chasing these robots, or of the desperation they must feel. Rather, Blade Runner plays like a Wong Kar Wai movie, where everyone is either sad all the time, or drunk. Motivation is like the score, tangential; everyone’s lost in giant thoughts, too awed for speed. Even when Ford shoots his first robot, she dies in slow-motion, t-u-m-b-l-i-n-g to her death, stringing it out.

The name Blade Runner is of course a marketing idiom. It doesn’t fit with what Ford does, or the movie he’s in. Ford is playing the gumshoe-role in a Raymond Chandler story; he’s not an Arnold Schwartzenegger-wannabe. He’s got a grizzled boss, a rich eccentric leading him astray, a beautiful daughter-type (Sean Young) making goo-goo eyes, and a smooth-talking antagonist (Rutger Hauer)… “blade-running” these guys won’t get him anywhere. So he smokes. And he drinks. He talks tough to the dame and gets beaten up by the hoods. He’s so Bogart in some parts of Blade Runner, you half-expect Lauren Bacall to whistle at him. Shame it’s Sean Young.

Sean Young is rubbish in Blade Runner. Given that a lot of the plot depends on her; that hurts Blade Runner quite a bit. The trouble is: she’s a robot. Not her character (she is), but Sean Young, I mean. You can practically hear her sprockets clink. Her love story with Ford is badly written from the get-go. But at least Ford acts. Young has trouble walking convincingly. And that’s a pity, because Harrison Ford is good. Ford is at his best playing crotchety good-guys. Think ofWitness, Frantic, Presumed Innocent, The Mosquito Coast. Ford needs to be a bit of bastard, it works for him. Make him goody-good and he plateaus. Bile inspires him.

Think of Blade Runner and you think of Blade Runner… as a look, a style,Blade Runner-chic: the sky is dark, the rain unrelenting, coronas of light wheel round flying cars. It’s not an entirely original vision; Ridley Scott took bits from Metropolis, bits from Alphaville, the feel of Raymond Chandler’s L.A., a little from Alien (though, granted, that was his). What Ridley did was make this vision beautiful. There isn’t a frame ofBlade Runner you couldn’t hang on your wall. It’s not a happy vision, nor an especially deep one, but my god – whatever 2046 wanted to be, Blade Runner is. Crappy love story and patchy detective work aside, it’s still a great movie.

Now, be sure to note that what I am reviewing is the Director's Cut of this cult classic. I haven't seen the original version where Harrison Ford narrates and it ends on a happier note, so if what I'm saying doesn't coincide with what you saw, that's probably why.

I find it funny that Harrison Ford was like the go-to guy for science fiction movies back in the day. Star Wars, Blade Runner, and I'd even go so far as to say Indiana Jones. Yeah, I guess he was quite the handsome lad. I'm sure a lot of people liked to see him run around shooting guns, all wet and bleeding.

But I'm still not sure if I enjoyed this movie. I'm leaning towards a no, actually. The cinematography was amazing, especially for 1980s, but still, I'm no sci-fi fan. I really don't like Star Wars or anything like that. I had to watch this movie for my film class, and I was supposed to be looking for cinematography stuff, so I might be a little biased there. Yet I really think the movie is cluttered.

I say this because things happen so fast yet so slowly. A lot of what happens isn't really explained, and while watching the viewer is left trying to puzzle out what the hell is going on now or what are they doing here. We don't see many transitions in the beginning; it's like, we're here and now we're there, figure out why. Yet towards the end, the progression is very slow. We see everything! Ford tiptoeing up stairs, Ford trying to con a Replicant woman, Ford falling in love. It's actually quite tedious.

I understand that the film went film noir on us. The love story is still incredibly hokey, though, and as he forces her to kiss him, and then she likes it, I groaned inside. I think that the story is good, it's original, but honestly the screenplay doesn't hold up.

It also feels like the director intentionally showcases how good the special effects look. There are tons of scenes where the camera pans around the horizon so we get a good look at how much of a good job they did in creating the city. Way to toot your own horn.

And also, tons of things are just left sitting out in the open, and you wonder why they even show those scenes in the first place. I guess it gives us some story, but I didn't sit through 2 hours of drawn-out scenes to be presented with something that makes no difference in the story.

If the story was supposed to focus on the ethics of killing a living being, even if man-made, it didn't do a very good job. I didn't get the feeling that anyone cared if they killed the Replicants. No one showed any acknowledgment that it was like killing a human being. I didn't really care if they died either. The building of the characters wasn't well done, so I didn't really care for any of them. I didn't feel an emotion for the people in the movie.

You'd think for a 2 hour movie, some characterization could be done. But it seems that here it couldn't. You'd think chasing and killing murderous robot-humans would be fun to watch. But it's not very action-packed. I thought this movie would be mind-blowing.

But it wasn't.

How to begin?

Blade Runner is I think one of the best science fiction movies ever made. This film is always in my mind when I drive around the industrial area of my city. There is a chimney of some plant that spits fire into the air...as I see it, I always remember this film. The opening scene in this film is of the vast area and city in the future. It’s amazing to think this film was made in 1982 and still looks briliant and as if the future is tomorrow.

Like I said before, I don’t know where to begin. The great cinematography of the film? The so fitting score by Vangelis? The good plot? Harrison Ford?

Everything works in this film! You feel the future is here, everything is different than you know and everything looks good in this future.

This is a science fiction film where your enemies are robot replicas. There is a great scene in the film where Harrison Ford’s character is asked if he has ever killed a human by mistake, and in a futuristic world where robots walk among humans, anything is possible and anything can happen.
The sound in this film is hypnotic as well. The music by Vangelis fits the future world of this film and the instrumental music in the background is exactly what you need to hear in this film. The plot is easy to understand so the greatness of this film is not its plot but the cinematography and the feel of this future and of this vast city. One of the great sience fiction films ever made and it truly amazing to think how a 1982 film can still look so beautiful and futuristic on screen even today in 2009.

This is a true classic, one of IMDB’s best 250 films of all times and when you see it, you’ll understand why.