no justice whatsoever paid to Philip K. Dick's novel

Rating: 5/10 (13 August 2003)

It's unfortunate I haven't seen the non-director's cut which didn't omit the voiceover narration. Because the director's cut is pathetic in terms of the story. The book is a very good book, not one of the best I've read, but very good, and not a difficult book to translate into a film. The makers of this film achieved the most difficult part about making the book into a movie-the special effects, cinematography/visuals, and recreation of the world from the book. All that was left was the story, which at least with the director's cut, is completely ignored by Ridley Scott. The only similarity between the book and movie is a few of the characters and the general premise. Otherwise everything from the title to the question that lies at the heart of the novel--"What constitutes a human being?"--is neglected. Watching this movie after reading the book was like watching two hours of absolutely nothing happening. I think it's okay for movies to take creative freedoms from novels, but to neglect as much as in this situation is a horrible idea, and since rather than taking creative freedoms, Ridley Scott just omitted so much action that was already plausible because it had been created in the novel. But he wanted to make it more boring because he thought his audience needed simplicity, yet I don't know how I would've appreciated or understood completely what was going on in this movie had I not read the book.