Filling In The Gaps Case File #3: Blade Runner

Now I must admit I have seen Blade Runner before. But the last time I watched it I was a tiny child of 7 sitting in an audience with my parents watching Han solo battle more bad guys but with nary a storm trooper or death star in sight.

A new "Final Cut" of the movie was just released, So I welcomed this opportunity to re-asses the film as an adult.

The look of the film is the most striking part about it. Los Angeles of the future (circa 1982's vision of the future anyway) is dark, grimy, lonely, and perpetually in the midst of violent hard rain showers. The place to be is the street side sushi stands in what looks like Chinatown. Harrison Ford is so called "blade runner" tracking down human androids run amok called "replicants."

Everything about the look of this film is artsy and polished to a high sheen. His love interest (a sexy replicant played by Sean young) looks like one of the girls in Robert Palmer's "Addicted to Love" video, and the villains look like they stumbled out of a punk band at CBGB in 1979.

It can be a hard movie to cozy up to. The look of the film and the story seems to keep the audience at arms length.
But Harrison Ford's underrated performance grounds the whole endeavor in the dirt and soil of reality. I'm not likely to blow away a replicant wearing a clear plastic raincoat as she crashes through window after window until she dies a slow motion death, but dare I say it Ford's character is relatable.

There's also some tantalizing mind games as we learn that the next generation of replicants made by a corporate behemoth don't even know they're replicants. Their memories are just brain implants programmed in by the corporation. And Ford promptly falls in love with one of them. I wish this theme had been explored a little more, but as it is it provides a nice undercurrent to the action and it got me thinking about the nature of memory.

There's no question the film's reputation has only grown over the years, and it's had a tremendous influence on every futuristic film that came after it. I don't really remember much about the movie the first time I saw it. But I enjoyed it this time. I could even watch it again to find arguments to make on both sides of the debate whether Ford was a replicant or not. Other fanboys say this new version makes it clear, but I'm not convinced.

Buy it, Rent it, Watch it on cable, Skip it: Rent it.

Next Up is a real change of pace. Liza Minelli before she became a tabloid caricature in Cabaret.