Too bad Philip K. Dick didn't get to watch this completed

Rating: 10/10 (3 December 2009)

I don't watch this film as often as a lot of my all time favourites, because that's like trying to eat a side of beef everyday! There's so much here, it's a challenge to your eyes, ears and everything else. Some films are like an entrée, some a main course, others a dessert. Then there's this, a meal for the cinematic mind that fills me up something really fierce. I don't feel the need to take in anything else for a while, because "Blade Runner" stuffs me to my limit.
You probably know the story and have your own opinions about who is what and all that jive. Let's talk about how well this has held up for so many years. It practically looks like it was made last week! Only "2001" before it and "The Matrix" since have had the impact "Blade Runner" has (don't get me started on "Star Wars", I have no desire to see that again). And I'm still waiting for the next visionary to come along, take the baton and run with it.
Dick wasn't too thrilled with many approaches to books adapted for the screen, his in particular. The overall attitude towards science facts and fiction is almost 100% different than in those days when the first attempts to make "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep?" reared their heads. He outright hated what was on the initial agenda and then after seeing early footage of "Blade Runner", changed his tune radically (in interviews one can hear, but not see, on a supplemental disc of the special edition of this classic).
Harrison Ford had many intriguing parts between instalments of his mega global hit franchises. Rick is the greatest of all his dramatic ciphers, someone existing to connect the dots that can barely be seen at all. Watch him struggle to stay on two legs, physically and psycho-emotionally, as you can never really imagine Indiana Jones, Han Solo or the creepy man he played in "The Conversation" trying to similarly keep their heads above water. He's a man truly alone even in a crowd, that probably has a dozen thoughts competing for room in his overloaded brain all the time.
Ridley Scott has made a feast for graphic designers, with every shot holding some image that makes you go, "wow!" I was shocked when buying a video game system a while back that there wasn't a "Blade Runner" game display advertising all the big companies on board with cheapening the memories of this landmark for the sake of money. When you just expect any vital film now to have it's ancillary profits boosted through those markets, it's rather refreshing to not see children from ten to fifty playing "Rick", like his significance was just destined to be a gamer's amusement.