Visionary but flat

Rating: 2/10 (31 May 2010)

We waited eagerly for this movies release in 1982. It's a ravishing movie just as the preview indicated... but after watching it dozens of times now, it is also ...how best to say it... woefully unshaped. The script is completely unremarkable. It has perfectly flat, uninteresting characters who are handed inept or trifling exchanges. I don't know what you could even characterize as a climax or even a development (and I like me some dull movies). The movie traipses into editorializing "Who's the greater danger?" territory with the replicants not being especially evil by comparison. You don't see them gunning down a terrified woman in the streets like Deckard does. But really, any clarity or philosophical weight that a fan insists is in there, is projected into it by the viewer. It does equal or (can you believe it?) surpass some of the very best old, noir compositions; but we do see that giant billboard one or two times too many. Ignore the bare-bones story. Turn the volume off and enjoy the visuals.
Ridley Scott had no peer in the visualizing department in 1982, then he went on to less visual, more 'shaped' output after this (Thelma and Louise, Blackhawk Down... Robin Hood?) and it was easy to see why he should have stayed with the more visual productions. They were more remarkable.