Blade Runner (1982)
Directed by Ridley Scott
Written by Hampton Fancher, David Peoples
Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Darryl Hannah, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos
Release Date June 25th, 1982
Ridley Scott’s sci-fi epic Blade Runner is one of my favorite films of all time, mostly for the unique, lived-in look, and bleak futuristic setting. Blade Runner is an eye-catching mind-blower that, if it skimps on character development a little, more than makes up for character deficits with incredible visual artistry. It’s unquestionably Ridley Scott’s finest work and with the sequel, Blade Runner 2049, being released soon, it’s as good a time as any to look back on Sir Ridley’s masterpiece.
Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired cop living in Los Angeles, circa 2019. Having given up his gig as a so-called Blade Runner, a cop who hunts and kills futuristic slave robots called "Replicants," Deckard is not pleased about being called to his former boss’s office and being pressed back into service. According to the Police Chief, six "Skin Jobs," as he derisively describes the Replicants, have escaped an interplanetary transport, killed dozens of people, and are now on Earth. It will be Deckard’s job to find the Replicants and "retire" them.
The first stop on Deckard’s investigation is the shady Tyrell Corporation where one Replicant has badly wounded another Blade Runner and disappeared. Hoping to gain insights into how to find these dangerous replicants, Deckard sits down to administer what Blade Runners call the Voight-Kampf Test, intended to determine whether the person being interviewed in the test is a human or a replicant. The V-K test works by gauging the emotional responses of the subject to a series of very odd questions—some nonsensical, others with a specific moral center.
The replicant that Deckard interviews, at the behest of the creepy Dr. Tyrell, is Rachael, played by Sean Young. Rachael is unaware that she is a replicant. Tyrell has programmed Rachael to have memories that he implanted into her brain that she believes prove that she is human. Whether or not Tyrell included a life limit of four years into Rachael’s coding is unknown, but we do know that most replicants have only a four-year life span and that Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the most dangerous of the replicants Deckard is looking for, is determined to find a cure for his short life span.
Find my full length review in the Geeks Community on Vocal.
