Style only carries a film so far; this one has substance...

Rating: Null/10 (16 February 2001)

As a fledgling writer, I'm always in pursuit of a good story that can, in turn, inspire me with my own visions. However, most movies I tend go after are usually the relatively unknowns (such as "Hangmen Also Die!", "Dark City", and "The Professionals"). In doing so, I usually pass the ones everyone else has seen a hundred times already. Up until two days ago, "Blade Runner" was part of that group. I'd seen a little bit of it back when I was a kid, chopped up on TV by some stupid telethon, but this is the first time that I've seen it all the way through (with the letterboxed director's cut, thankfully; never trust a studio to edit a film right).
Once I got over my annoyance at no onscreen credit for the writers (at least for the opening credits and the tape case; like most people, I don't stick around for the end credits), I realized how much I actually enjoyed this movie. I look at this L. A. in a 2019 that I hope never comes and I see a world that is the logical updating of Fritz Lang's "Metropolis": dehumanized, dreary, and rotting from the inside. There can be no better representation of this world than the replicants, synthetic human beings who surpass the average human in intelligience, speed, and agility, but who only have four years to enjoy them however they can. Is it truly any wonder, therefore, that the Nexus 6 models rebelled the way they did? Four years isn't very long, so what's the point of toiling under masters you can live without? No wonder the corporations want them dead.
Deckard (as played by Harrison Ford) has been called many things: a 21st century Sam Spade, an anti-Han Solo, and even a replicant himself. To me, the true answer is none of the above. Deckard is Deckard, that is all. Unlike Sam Spade, he doesn't enjoy the job he has to do or really even tolerates it. It's obvious that it makes him sick to have to gun down people whose only crime is wanting to choose their own destiny. Deckard doesn't have that luxury and every downed replicant seems to kill another piece of his soul.
From this, it's been suggested that Deckard is a replicant himself. Again, I don't think so. Such an assertion is too easy an answer for Deckard's revulsion for the profession he quit once already. Besides, infiltration is something that his employers have undoubtably considered and so probably make a point of screening potential candidates. Add all this to the fact that Deckard can't roll with the replicant's superpowered punchs any better than the rest of the general population and all you have left is a man who is deeply troubled by the trap his life has become.
Rutger Haeur's Roy is no less complicated himself. Granted, thanks to the lack of emotional maturity that he was engineered with, he has no qualms about such things as wantonly taking life and serious injury. Yet, for all that, all he truly wants is to live a little longer than what's already been built into him. The whole point of the final cat-and-mouse chase through the Bradbury (also used for "The Outer Limits" episode, "Demon With A Glass Hand", and the TV movie, "The Night Strangler") was not so much kill or be killed as it was to make Deckard understand what it feels like to be a replicant.
While there is no denying Scott's impeccable style on display here (any lover of German Expressionism or film noir would appreciate it), the story development involved is not given nearly enough credit. It's almost as if the public wants to forget that someone (in this case, the legendary Phillip K. Dick, who wrote the film's basis, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" and Hampton Fancher, who adapted it to screen) had to actually sit down, plot things out, and bang the story into shape. But without the efforts of Messers. Dick and Fancher, there would be no "Blade Runner" or if there were, it would not be nearly as good. Not even a director of Scott's obvious ability can make up for such a fundamental component (don't believe me? Try watching "1492" without falling asleep or throwing up). So, in spite of the efforts of whoever decided to omit the writing credits, kindly remember the aforementioned gentlemen who did the job. Because of them, "Blade Runner" will still be talked about another twenty years, I think.