Why the drooling blind respect?

Rating: 4/10 (23 October 2006)

Hoping to be intellectually, philosophically and otherwisely thrilled to bits after having read these glowing, overflowing with praise-reviews, I watched BR the director's cut yesterday. I cannot for the life of me even begin to see what made these reviewers write what they did. The film has fantastic and potent music, an efficiently grimy atmosphere and decent acting, but that's it! Nothing remotely special here. The thing that made me cringe the most, was the almost stupefying awe so many of the reviewers had for the so-called deep philosophical thematics of the film. Let's get things in perspective: the human-robot theme, its implications on the human condition and one freaky looking professor genius 'playing God' having created it all is NOT what I call an intriguingly abstruse view on man and his role in life. I call it very, very cliché and done about a thousand times before, during and after. And all the while I was reading about Scott's stupendous vision and take on man's complexity and how he forced the viewer to see things his way. Let's get things in perspective once again: Scott is a (good) director, but as with any director, his main task consists of telling actors where to go and stand and how to deliver their lines, only occasionally conferring with the writer as to how this or that scene might be interpreted and filmed. In this particular film, it seems to me that Scott's main contribution was him incessantly coaxing one or other stage hand to set the smoke/water-machine to full blast! There wasn't one scene without smoke or water: it's not difficult then to create 'an awesome atmosphere, presaging the dark reality of what human life is surely to become'. The film for me is a simplistic, superficial little story told in a pretentious and portentous manner, apparently convincingly enough to fool so many into thinking that here is a true cinematographic masterpiece that will stand the test of time. It didn't stand the test of its runtime, I'm afraid.