Blade Runner

1982 Sci Fi

A blend of science fiction and noir detective fiction, Blade Runner (1982) was a box office and critical bust upon its initial exhibition, but its unique postmodern production design became hugely influential within the sci-fi genre, and the film gained a significant cult following that increased its stature. Harrison Ford stars as Rick Deckard, a retired cop in Los Angeles circa 2019. L.A. has become a pan-cultural dystopia of corporate advertising, pollution and flying automobiles, as well as replicants, human-like androids with short life spans built by the Tyrell Corporation for use in dangerous off-world colonization. Deckard's former job in the police department was as a talented blade runner, a euphemism for detectives that hunt down and assassinate rogue replicants. Called before his one-time superior (M. Emmett Walsh), Deckard is forced back into active duty. A quartet of replicants led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) has escaped and headed to Earth, killing several humans in the process. After meeting with the eccentric Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), creator of the replicants, Deckard finds and eliminates Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), one of his targets. Attacked by another replicant, Leon (Brion James), Deckard is about to be killed when he's saved by Rachael (Sean Young), Tyrell's assistant and a replicant who's unaware of her true nature. In the meantime, Batty and his replicant pleasure model lover, Pris (Darryl Hannah) use a dying inventor, J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) to get close to Tyrell and murder him. Deckard tracks the pair to Sebastian's, where a bloody and violent final confrontation between Deckard and Batty takes place on a skyscraper rooftop high above the city. In 1992, Ridley Scott released a popular director's cut that removed Deckard's narration, added a dream sequence, and excised a happy ending imposed by the results of test screenings; these legendary behind-the-scenes battles were chronicled in a 1996 tome, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon. more..

Director: Ridley Scott

Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young,Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh

Reviews

  • May be the best "new" American movie released this year.

    - Los Angeles Times

    19 January 2013

  • This movie is great in any version...I don't miss what has been cut from the new version. The overall effect is so beautifully wrought, a few details aren't going to bring things crashing down.

    Desson Thomson - The Washington Post

    19 January 2013

  • Grand enough in scale to carry its many Biblical and mythological references, Blade Runner never feels heavy or pretentious -- only more and more engrossing with each viewing. It helps, too, that it works as pure entertainment.

    Rita Kempley - The Washington Post

    19 January 2013

  • Most important, several elements -- the film's tough, new ending; a sly, fleeting dissolve of a unicorn, not in the original; and a brilliant, trompe d'oeil flicker of life in a shot of a still photograph -- bring Deckard's existential dilemma into focus.

    - The Chicago Tribune

    19 January 2013

  • The grafting of 40s hard-boiled detective story with SF thriller creates some dysfunctional overlaps, and the movie loses some force whenever violence takes over, yet this remains a truly extraordinary, densely imagined version of both the future and the present, with a look and taste all its own.

    Jonathan Rosenbaum - Chicago Reader

    19 January 2013

Awards

  • Best Art Direction-Set Decoration

    Academy Awards (1983)

     
  • Best DVD Special Edition Release

    Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (2008)

  • Best Cinematography

    BAFTA Awards (1983)

  • Jordan Cronenweth

    British Society of Cinematographers (1982)

     
  • Best Film

    Fantasporto (1993)