Best Sci-Fi film of the 80s

Rating: 10/10 (9 May 2001)

Blade Runner is a surprise, a delight, an enigma, and a triumph of will. Having read a book on the making of blade runner, I found out how hard it was to actually get this film made. Like other Philip Dick adaptions, this movie preserves his interesting premises on artificial intelligence (although it completely reverses them, Dick is not a dogmatic or ideological sci-fi writer like Stanislaw Lem or Arthur Clarke, both esteemed but inferior writers next to Dick) while pasting them on a superficial action story. Where Blade Runner becomes a great film is in the many layers of meaning contained in the film, some of which are surely unintentional to writers, director and definately actors. This film has an A-list of fabulous character actors, many of whom are still with us: Joanna Cassidy, Joe Turkel, J. Emmett Walsh, Edward James Olmos, and William Sanderson among others. Daryl Hannah is only competent but the real reason Harrison Ford hates this movie (publicly) is because Rutger Hauer completely stole it from him. Hauer's performance turns villainy inside-out, and I only wish they had given some kind of reason for his more sadistic moments -- i guess we're supposed to accept his childlike attitude about life extends to violence as well. I think there are many facets of the relationships between the characters (particularly Ford's and Young's) that are not spelled out, so many viewers may think that the superficial action yarn is all that's going on (I remember the first time I saw it thinking it was absolutely awful). The movie's plot is pretty disjointed, but I think in this way it mirrors other successful noirs like "The Big Sleep." The music is excellent, Vangelis' best work, and I can hear its influence in much of the electronic music of the 90s. This movie is almost single-handedly responsible for the surge in widescreen format presentations on video and television, and I think for that we should all be very grateful to an all-time cult classic that gets better every year.