Cast: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah

Director: Ridley Scott

Screenplay: Hampton Fancher

Running time: 1 hr 57 mins

Genre: Sci-Fi



CRITIQUE:

Post-film debate that circulate around Blade Runner (whichever cut you’ve seen, as there are three) is mostly about whether Harrison Ford’s Deckard is a replicant or not – and often not on the astonishing production quality of this film, its technical achievements, and visual aesthetics. For Ridley Scott’s sci-fi masterpiece is undeniably a stunning feat in filmmaking that set as a benchmark for hundreds of imitators to come, or rather inspired followers. If you’ve seen Spielberg’s Artificial Intelligence and the Wachowski brothers’ revolutionary The Matrix (ignore its two sequels), then you can identify the Blade Runner influence. This transcends into the Kubrickian territory, up there in the pantheon where 2001: A Space Odyssey belongs, yet remains uniquely on its own.


The year is 2019, and if you’ve watched a handful of the clichéd “dystopian future” flicks already, you’ll succumb that this is the template of them all. The opening panorama shows the City of Angels looking like a vision of hellish architecture, a cityscape that spews with tongues of flame into the air; a metropolis with ziggurat-like structures. Remember this was all done when PC’s were still as enormous as your wardrobe; and the use of models and effects make it even more incredible. As much as it is tagged as science-fiction, it is also a distinctive film noir, with a crepuscular cinematography, that is darkly-lit, with a rain-lashed landscape and accentuated with neon lights and the use of dramatic shafts of luminosity, made by a presumably dying sun. Observe Deckard’s visit to Tyrell’s lair and meeting the mysterious Rachel; there’s a skilled interplay of lighting in the scene, where a filtered glow gives mood and atmosphere.


So much for its technical aspects, which rise above the many facets of this film, perhaps most of us pretty much know what happen in here. Deckard’s an ex-policeman summoned forth to hunt down four escaped replicants, and one by one, as he terminates them, he understands, like peeling layers upon layers of onion skin, the morality of human replication. With its sci-fi trappings, Blade Runner is actually a deeper, profound, quasi-religious and psychological prodding on humanity’s will to live and survive. It is theorised that Tyrell is playing the God-complex and that Roy is the Christ-figure, created to die (there’s also other nods, watch Roy save Deckard from falling using a wounded hand with a nail, and his clutching of a white dove). To sidestep that, there’s a more human film in here, especially in its characters. Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard sets the template to many identity-in-question flicks; using an effortless appeal, yet burning with ambiguity, probably one his most memorable roles in his entire career (along with that whippersnapper of a man that wears a fedora hat). Sean Young’s Rachel presents a manufactured sense of physical beauty, but confused of her human capabilities. Her confrontation with Deckard in his apartment, along with her discovery of emotions, is a compelling watch. Daryl Hannah’s Pris also leaves an impression as the feline femme-fatale, but it’s definitely Rutger Hauer’s Roy, whose character comes so dangerously close to being a villain stereotype, but saves it at the last minute (thanks to the excellent script!) that the sense of villainy in this film is diminished and becomes even more enigmatic – his Roy is not a villain, but a created being in search for answers, deprived of the right to live and the morale of being a fully-pledged human. His final line: “All those moments will be lost in time... like tears... in rain... Time to die...” is tragic, poetic, and unforgettable.


It has an ending that will raise the brows of many, hence the debate on Deckard’s identity, as shown in the film, a vision of a unicorn and an origami later, there is a twist on the tale. But then again, the question should not be whether Deckard is a replicant or not. This is why the film is made, to make us ask ourselves, are we created to die, or created to live? "Wake up. It's time to die."



VERDICT:

Much-doubted on release but now, in varying levels, this is a sci-fi masterpiece as much as a reflection on humanity’s life and death. Blade Runner is a searing, complex cinema, marvellously made and beautifully human.



RATING: A+