On B List of Movie Reviews

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Blade Runner (1982)

Rate: 10
Viewed: 3/06, 11/15, 2/24

BlRun
3/06: What I like about Blade Runner is the futuristic look of the world.

The cinematography, most especially the ambience, is excellent, reminding me of the Tex Murphy PC games which include Under a Killing Moon, The Pandora Directive, and The Overseer. However, the story is threadbare. Even worse is the slow pace, causing me to fall asleep.

All in all, hopefully, I can stay awake the next time I see Blade Runner.

11/15: It's my third time seeing Blade Runner, and my opinion has been steadily improving.

However, one constancy about the sci-fi neo-noir is it moves very slow. Also, there's not much to see of the futuristic world although it's understandable that the vision as presented was way ahead of its time in 1982 which is to be expected because of 2001: A Space Odyssey's Douglas Trumbull whose work was eventually taken over by David Dryer.

The acting is fine, and the story is well-presented with a voice-over narration. It's just that the pace needs work to get things going. A big bonus of the DVD release is the improved look of the picture.

All in all, Blade Runner would've been better if it wasn't so slow.

2/24: Maybe they should've set the time to 2419, yeah?

Of course, we've made past 2019, and the current world looks nothing like what's shown in Blade Runner. This time, I'm calling it a sci-fi neo-noir masterpiece. The Director's Cut helps enormously. When I first saw it, the ambience was too dark, and it was hard to make out much. Plus, the slow pace was hurting the film a lot, but now, it's better.

It goes without saying you'll never see anything like Blade Runner which is a Philip K. Dick adaptation just like Total Recall. What an amazing job by everybody for making it in 1981. It's a stunning accomplishment, indeed. The story is simple: Harrison Ford is a Blade Runner and his job is to kill robots, hence Replicants, who have illegally come to Earth. That's the whole movie. The purpose of the Voight-Kampff test is to measure the empathy of responses; the more questions there are, the harder it is to escape the fact that the testee is a Replicant.

In the past, after Rutger Hauer's character died just like that, I was confused, but I now see why: he had four years to live, and by the time the film started, he only had about two days left. The performances are outstanding: Harrison Ford, Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, and so on. But the cinematography is mindblowing which is an Oscar winner for sure. The movie appears to have been shot on location in Japan, but it never was. The Bradbury Building and the Ennis House are featured a great deal as well as in other films such as The Thirteenth Floor, Wolf, and The Day of the Locust.

At the beginning, I thought the filmmakers were going to reveal Deckard as a Replicant, but it never happened. If it was otherwise, I wouldn't have accepted it because he acted like a human being the entire time. I know there was a moment that his eyes showed off a red glow like a cat, but it's a cheap trick. So, ignore that.

All in all, Blade Runner is in the same class as 2001: A Space Odyssey for the sci-fi genre.