The last great science fiction movie, a flawed masterpiece.

Rating: 10/10 (16 August 2003)

I was growing up when science fiction films started coming back in vogue, only now with budgets to match their ambition. I was 12 when Star Wars was released, 13 when Close Encounters of the Third Kind appeared. Just as I was turning to adulthood at 17, along came this completely adult science fiction movie. Sad to say, however, in the intervening two decades, not one film has managed to handle a science fiction concept in quite so intelligent a manner. Couple the deep themes of the nature of humanity and the nature of death with Ridley Scott's absolutely inimitable visual style, Rutger Hauer's powerhouse performance as Batty and Vangelis' seminal score and this movie swiftly acquires the deserved status of a classic.
That was the good. Now let us briefly examine the bad. The opening establishing shot of Los Angeles, 2019 is of course a classic of its kind. Subsequent lingering shots of futuristic buildings, however, tend to hold up the pace of the movie, often at crucial points of plot development. Apart from being unnecessary they are too long for their own good, frequently extended to allow the traverse of a supernumerary flying vehicle.
In addition these shots don't display any of the brilliantly noir claustrophobic atmosphere of the dialogue scenes, so much so that they sometimes seem to have been inserted from a completely different film.
The film does have its longueurs. The second act sags alarmingly while Deckard is investigating the photograph and the snake scale until finally we get some action with Zhora's retirement. Later on when he's chasing Pris, we can see that she's waiting for him in Sebastian's flat, so the lengthy shots of Deckard making his way up the Bradbury building only serve to increase impatience rather than suspense.
It seems churlish to criticise Harrison Ford's performance, particularly since it at times contains some of his best work - particularly the love scene with Rachael - but for the first half of the film it is very obvious that Blade Runner is the first serious film which he has to carry on his own. There is a palpable lack of consistency in his characterisation, as if Ford hasn't decided who Deckard is, yet. In reaction to things Bryant is telling him about the new "skin jobs", he screws up his face in an attempt at scorn which comes across as expressing the need for some kind of reaction, but not knowing what. He apologetically calls Rachael and asks her down to the bar, and suddenly turns into the worst kind of self-regarding galoot. And the Jerry Lewis impression during the interview with Zhora - it's just *wrong*.
One problem with Deckard's characterisation isn't Ford's fault at all. As the "old Blade Runner" with all the "old magic", it sometimes seems as if he's never met a replicant before. In all his retirements he leaves himself almost ludicrously open to attack, and escapes by sheer luck each time. It would have been better to demonstrate his prowess when retiring Zhora, Leon and Pris and show that he has met his match with Batty.
Regarding the famed (not to say precedential) "Director's Cut". I know I'm in a minority amongst Blade Runner cultists, but it seems clear that in cutting the original version of the film the way they did, the studio evidently knew what they were doing. Shots of vehicles flying around the city go on for too long; Scott's battle to retain his "Unicorn Dreams" sequence is legendary, but having put a portion of it in, it's clear that the unicorn's "horn" is artificial, and it comes too early in the film for the connection with Gaff's unicorn origami figure to be evident to anyone other than die hard fans who already know what to look for. Elimination of the voice over certainly had many proponents amongst fans of the movie, not excluding myself, and of course it did have very many bad points - "Bryant was the kind of guy who in the old days used to call black men ni**ers" (they cut the very worst one, I had to read it in the published script: "I've seen 'em laugh, I've seen 'em howl. I never saw one cry."). However, the removal of the voice over has had one rather distressing side effect - it eliminates the character of Gaff almost entirely. Without the voice over there is no indication that Gaff is after Deckard's position, and scarcely any sign that he is a Blade Runner himself until the very end of the movie. The frustrated look on Gaff's face as he observes Deckard's survival now has absolutely no context.
After twenty-one years I now feel freer to express a few niggles, happy in the thought that the movie is old enough and certainly classic enough to take a little criticism. It still remains one of my all-time favourite movies, and, as a science fiction fan, one of the very very few movies to treat its genre with respect and intelligence.
*2007 EDIT* News arrives of "Blade Runner: The Final Cut" along with the real story of what happened at the time of the Director's Cut. It seems that Ridley was actually too busy with _1492 (1992)_ (qv) to genuinely supervise the creation of BR:TDC - he simply told the studio to take off the happy ending and the voice over, and they seem to have taken him at his word but in addition thrown everything else in if they had a negative of it. The result was the movie which, in retrospect, it's hard to believe anybody could have believed Ridley Scott actually had anything to do with it. With the new version, they have apparently taken note of my comments above and have even undertaken some reshoots (with Ben Ford, Harrison Ford's son) to fix the second act flabbiness. I very much look forward to the real Ridley Scott vision.