Style over substance, yet still impressive

Rating: 7/10 (24 January 2001)

Blade Runner has become a cult hit in the 19 years since its release. It is understandable why. The film has a disjointed, postmodern narrative surrounded by superb photography and set design. The hero is not even a hero and the conclusion of the film, at least the director's cut, isn't all that happy. Most of all, Blade Runner eerily shadows the near future for our own world, the future of cloning and unnaturally created humans. Science fiction has always been able to show us images of ourselves or our world in a future or alien world, things we would prefer not to see.
Blade Runner's premise is simple. Deckard (Harrison Ford) has to hunt down four Replicants': artificial humans who have great intelligence but superior physical attributes. These replicants have run amock in space colonies and now human authorities on Earth are worried that the replicants will do the same here.
All of this is really nothing more than a faint attempt at a story. Blade Runner's success lies not with its story element, but with the amazing vision of fantasy and fear of its director, Ridley Scott. Scott had previously made "Alien", another postmodern vision of man's possible future. In that film he questioned colonisation, globalization (but on a intergalactic scale), our fascination with destriction and the corruption of modern business. In "Blade Runner", Scott explores corruption, man's destructive nature, but he also delves into emotion and the possibility of someone ELSE creating those emotions for us, as is the case for the replicants.
The plot plays second fiddle to the set design and costumes. The choice of Los Angeles being the setting for the film is brilliant: at present L.A. is a city blanketed in sunshine, with an image of blonde babes and surfers all too obvious. In "Blade Runner" the city is nothing like it is today. It has become a blend of Tokyo, New York and some Eastern European wasteland of pollution.
The vehicle, weapons and costumes all have a distinctive 1980's - apocalyptic - retro feel to them, the flying cars are almost too cheesy to be taken seriously, but combined with Vangelis' synthesizer score and the noir-ish feel of the narrative they fit just perfectly.

"Blade Runner"'s narrative is just that: film noir. Deckard is akin to Sam Spade, he's seen it all, been there and back, and is a tortured soul. It's got the femme fatale, the more evil than evil villan and the corporation that is somehow responsible for all this mess. At the same time the film is a thriller, a western and a science fiction yarn.
Harrison Ford is suited as Deckard. He is the anti-Han Solo or Indiana Jones. Rutger Hauer is superbly evil too, it is a shame he hasn't been able to follow this up with anything as good.
Many films since this have tried to show a world void of any semblances of what we take for granted today, but none have compared to "Blade Runner". The film that came closest to it would be the Japanese animation "Akira" which also deals with similar themes.
Science fiction always succeeds when the viewer is planted in the story one step beyond what might have actually happened. See Planet of the Apes, Alien, Star Wars, et al. In "Blade Runner" we get a vision of the world as it may actually be one day. Maybe not 2019, but somewhere down the track the science fiction of films such as these may become science fact.
"Blade Runner" is one of THE definitive sci-fi movies ever made.