Visually intoxicating - Blade Runner is a prophetic sci-fi masterpiece and one of the greatest films ever made

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 2009)

Blade Runner (1982)
Top 3 - 1982
Top 3 - Sci Fi Films of All Time
Top 50 - All Time
Ridley Scott's visually intoxicating sci-fi epic that is 'Blade Runner' has finally gained the momentum and recognition it fully deserves, over two decades after its release. It even made the revised version of the AFI's Top 100 American Films.
When released in 1982, Blade Runner flopped at the box office and sharply divided critics. Its technical brilliance was universally acknowledged, however many critics believed the film lacked a real human story and depth in its dramatic nature. Even eminent American critic Roger Ebert felt the film failed on a 'human level', although he somewhat revised his opinions years later.
Well I strongly disagree with this interpretation of the film - after all, this is a cautionary tale about the accelerating mechanisation of our society, the unsustainable expansion of the world and the increasing grasp of massive corporations. The film's elements range from subtle philosophical dilemmas such as 'What makes a human a human?' 'What constitutes existence?" An allusion to these dilemmas is offered by Pris (Daryl Hannah), who is a Replicant when she utters Rene Descartes' signature dictum: "I think therefore I am". Or when Roy (Rutger Hauer) quotes Nietzsche ("I've seen things") in his monologue at the end of the film. Blade Runner has depth and multiple layers to it, which I suspect would be fully discovered if the film is watched multiple times.
Los Angeles, 2019 - Oppressively high rise temples soar up into the occluded and polluted skies of LA. Acid Rain collects between the neon-illuminated fissures that separate the colossal buildings. The city is a hybrid of races (there is nothing sci-fi about that) and the city's poor are enslaved in infected dwellings on ground level, while the rich are secluded in their skyscrapers or the very rich have escaped into "off world colonies", where they profit from Replicants who they use as slave labour. The Tyrell Corporation makes Replicants exactly like humans and injects them with a lifespan of 4 years, because they collect too many memories and acquire to much human experience, making them dangerously human. Can these artificial beings become humans? They feel, they smell, they are emotionally attached, does that matter? The film centres on a Blade Runner assigned to "decommision" a few Replicants who escaped back to Earth, which is strictly prohibited. As the film progresses, we wonder is Deckard a Replicant, if so he is indistinguishable. This film is the grittier, darker more violent 80s version of Kubrick's '2001'. It is an astonishing achievement.
The film was overshadowed upon release by the dominance of 'ET: The Extra Terrestrial', another masterpiece by Spielberg, but one that offers more comforting qualities than Scott's probing epic.
10/10