As shallow as the rain puddles scattered throughout the movie itself.

Rating: 3/10 (15 December 2018)

This is my first full movie review, probably ever. This will be a record of what I honestly feel about the film following my first ever full viewing of it. Judging from a few I've read, I'm not alone in thinking this film is insanely overrated.
I viewed the Director's Cut on Blu-Ray and I have to say, I don't get it. The scores I mean, and the general positivity surrounding this film. I went in without paying any attention to these things until after the viewing, only really knowing that the film garnered a fairly large cult following years later.
So, to summarise the plot in my own words here, as I know people will likely point to people criticising the film as "not understanding it's deep and utter complexity", here we go.
Deckard is a former supposedly high ranking Blade Runner, an individual that is part of law enforcement in the year of 2019, whose purpose is to hunt down rogue "Replicants", these being hyper-realistic androids that look, sound and act almost exactly like humans. Replicants are sent off to various locations for slave labour in this universe.
Deckard is forced out of retirement by a higher up, as a handful of dangerous Replicants have managed to escape their slavery and have come back to earth to attempt to find their creator, and extend their lifespan, as Replicants are created to live very short lives.
That's a basic summary, but is really all the film ever tells us about what is happening, ever, there's no evolution beyond this, no twists to keep us hooked. The pacing is so painfully slow that there's few details to divulge at all, aside from this summary. This is the concept and story of the film with a LOT of pointless quiet time splitting things up to extend run time and probably just to keep the budget below a certain threshold. Take it or leave it, love it or hate it.
To get a bit more in depth on what actually transpires, there are a few gripes I have that I'd like to cover, which will be most relevant obviously to those that have seen the film.
Firstly, why in the hell are you sending one man out against multiple dangerous renegade, SUPER strong androids that are on the loose, with little to nothing to go on whatsoever? Well that's not totally true, The chief has digital photographs of what these escaped Replicants look like in his office that he shows to Deckard, and you aren't sending out squadrons of heavily armed officers attempting to capture them? Why not?
Secondly, Deckard is made out to be some "incredible" Blade Runner. The higher up/Chief, Bryan, that recruits him for the task, goes as far as to blackmail him into doing so when Deckard initially declines. Bryan apparently does all this because they "need his magic".
They kick up so much of a fuss about how incredibly talented of a Blade Runner he is, but in just about every encounter, he's a complete mess, and is more often than not just landing on his back with blood pouring from his mouth. WHY doesn't he have backup with him to locate these Replicants? It's a massive, gaping plot hole that is never addressed or explained in any way, we're just meant to accept that it is this way because "movie has to happen", despite it making absolutely no sense.
The actual visuals of this film are by far the best part of it. For a film that's over 30 years old, it looks great. Granted, this is largely remastered for a HD blu-ray release, but the sets, costumes etc. largely stand the test of time. This is about the most generous praise I can give the film.
The Replicants themselves act just as brain dead at times, particularly the primary blonde haired duo, whose names I cannot recall beyond their mention at the very beginning. These two have the goal of tracking down their creator. Eventually they do so whilst manipulating one of their "lesser designers", JF Sebastian, forcing him to allow them access to their creator's penthouse.
The blonde haired male, who is pretty much the leader of these renegade replicants, goes alone with Sebastian to speak with his creator, and after requesting that his life be extended, he's basically told "Yeah, I'm sorry but that can't be done, you're made to last this long and that's that", then ends up gouging out his eyes, and killing Sebastian, for no reason, off screen.
The male is an absolute joke at the very end, smashing his head into walls basically acting like Jack from The Shining in the most pointlessly drawn out attempt to kill someone I've probably ever seen, even going so far as to strip off his clothes for zero reason to make it even more comical.
The blonde haired female, is given the literal most perfect opportunity to kill Deckard, because let's be honest, it seems like anyone could judging from his ineptitude in this movie, but I guess she decided she hadn't done enough backflips so she decides to let him go to get his gun and blow her guts out. Why?
Not to mention, these are androids. Synthetic beings. Who thought it would be a great idea to have their innards and blood colour be totally indistinguishable from ordinary humans? Something tells me that will just make it harder to narrow down any escapees. Maybe the creator wanted it to be this way, but perhaps regulation should have opposed the idea, or at least create a law that has some mandatory design implementation to where they can be easily identified immediately if they get loose? Doesn't really matter in the end I guess, because nothing about it is ever mentioned or built upon whatsoever.
How on earth is this film deep? It's a collection of non-sensical, illogical events that try so hard to make you think on some kind of deeper level, but they just totally fail. There's no mystery, these are renegade machines that are designed to be as human as possible, but aren't, with an inept agent attempting to capture them, and only succeeding due to pure luck.
If I have more to add I will do so but there's really nothing much more to talk about, it's one of the slowest films I've ever seen that tries to make you think during the periods where nothing is happening, but it more often than not leads nowhere, or it leads into another problem and something else to complain about and just ask, "why?"
Final score from me is 3/10, mostly on account of how the film looks and its general visual presentation.