"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, lik

Rating: 7/10 (19 January 2002)

Purists and would be "cinephiles" have been arguing now for twenty years as to which is the definitive version of Blade Runner... Is it the studio version, with its Phillip Marlow-esque narration and it's tacked on "Hollywood" ending. Or is it the supposed "Director's Cut" with narration missing, the unicorn dream sequence and the "what the hell" ending... Personally, I don't know because personally I've never really "got" Blade Runner. I'll be the first to point out the ground-breaking visuals and the un-rivalled special effects that still stand-up to this day, but I've never "got" the film because I just can't buy into the central concept of a cop who, in the words of Rutger Hauer "Mopes around then f**ks a refrigerator", ok, that may be completely miss-quoted but you get what he was trying to say.
Deckard, the character portrayed by Harrison Ford is perhaps the most useless cinematic detective ever seen, not only is he slower than a bus on a motorway (if you've been stuck behind one you'll know what I mean) but he gets beaten-up by almost every one of the Replicants. He never seems to grasp the notion that these "people" are dangerous and perhaps he should tread carefully, instead he barges in playing it cool and ends up getting his ass kicked at every turn. Now the main reason Blade Runner left me cold (replicant sexual-politics aside of course) is the questions it raises and it's failure to give a proper answer to them. The "what the hell" ending I mentioned whilst talking about Ridley Scott's infamous director's cut refers to the fact that we only get half the interpretation.
Okay, so Deckard dreams of a unicorn, possibly one of the implanted memories that could answer the question as to weather he IS a replicant, this is THE question that gets film-geeks more excited than any other in the annals of movie history. If Deckard is a replicant then why would Tyrell implant the memory of a unicorn, I mean a Unicorn for heavens sake, why not say a family dinner or his first date, something that would make Deckard believe he was human and leave him with no doubt about it. I mean a Unicorn; it couldn't have been more obvious if they'd put it on one of the huge neon billboards that hover above the L.A. skyline, "Deckard is a Replicant". But Deckard isn't the only character that fails to win me over.
With the exception of Hauer's Batty, none of the replicants register, we don't care about them, and if they are such all-knowing works of technology then how come they're such morons, not a one of them has the sense they where programmed with (then again Tyrell was probably too busy planting memories of unicorns or bike riding monkeys to give them any brains or common sense). The world of Blade Runner is a cold, harsh and un-feeling world, a world of constant rain and darkness where people move about the multi-cultural landscape without uttering a word to anyone else (no wonder Deckard's represses). It's this vision of a crumbling old/new metropolis that makes Blade Runner what it is, but whereas the special effects haven't dated, the use of neon lights and pitch black framing would become the main visual staple for every early nineties music video and TV commercial. This becomes such an annoyance that at times we expect to see a "Nike" logo supperimposed on the screen.
The dialog shoots for profundity, but smacks of pretension, and even if the final battle between Batty and Deckard is very exciting the whole thing just stops, as if the battles behind the scenes had resulted in Ridley getting bored and just going home. I would like to hail Blade Runner as the classic most people make it out to be, but I just don't "get" it, and as for Deckard, how can you call the character a hero, when the only reason he survives the ordeal is because Batty lets him. Worth a look, but not a classic... 5/10