Comments on Director's Cut

Rating: Null/10 (29 October 2001)

Ridley Scott's horrific future-vision of Alien was a landmark in cinema. Blade Runner keeps his trademark bleak city vision and opens it up with questions of existences in a detective thriller. The Director's Cut adds a whole new element that many people suspected from the original but makes it clear that this is what we're meant to think.
The visuals and the score in the film are excellent and for me make the whole thing work. Ford and Penn are good in their roles, but Rutgar Hower is excellent as the lead android making this one of his best performances - who doesn't know his final speech almost verbatim by now?! Ford's wooden style fits in well with the cold city that he lives in and also lends itself to the fact that Ford may not be everything he seems.
This is the version that we should have seen years ago - it allows us to follow the story ourselves without the voiceover having to lead us by the hand. The main addition of Ford's unicorn dreams opens up a whole new element to the film and throws up plenty to talk about once it is finished. A beautiful looking film that, thanks to this cut, has plenty of substance to match the visual flair.