Didn't Like It

Rating: 4/10 (2 December 2005)

Writing a negative review for this movie seems like heresy, but I feel compelled to do it. Also, perhaps I'm not even entitled to write this review because I could only stand to watch the first hour of the movie before deciding to turn it off. Unbelievable? Let me explain why. This movie is perhaps one of the most touted films of all time and I had not seen it despite the movie having been around for over 20 years. So, one day, I finally decided to watch the thing and bore patiently through each boring scene after another. I'm a fan of science fiction but now I realize not in the sense of a connoisseur but just a guy who likes a good blend of action, drama, science, fiction and acting. This movie arguably has all of those things but is achingly slow in presenting them. It cannot escape looking every bit like a 1982 vision of what the future would be like and suffers too much from being implemented from an arty angle. The scenes are too dark for Harrison Ford's charms (he could easily have been replaced with someone else who didn't have Indiana Jones behind him) and the characters are much too deep to bother even trying to understand. The philosophical angle doesn't impress me either. There are many 'big questions' movies can deal with without making the audience itself lie on the couch. I suppose the last 40 minutes or so of the film might have been better and tied up some loose ends but I could not stand to waste any more time watching it. Looking at other movies from the same era which I still find very interesting - Conan The Barbarian, Indiana Jones and Alien - I'm disappointed to say that Blade Runner could have been better. Anyway, I will shoulder part of the blame because I didn't watch it to the end and perhaps because technology is moving at light speed these days, philosophical science fiction movies really look much, much older than they ought to. No offense to those who really loved this movie. To each his own.