Blade Runner Review

Blade Runner is a 1982 noir sci-fi written by Hampton Fancher/David Webb Peoples and directed by Ridley Scott. Based on the Phillip K Dick novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? the film received a lukewarm reception at best upon its release, but has become a cult classic popular enough to be a household name, despite multiple confusing cuts.



(Please note that I watched the "final cut" for this review)



Story

Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a blade runner, is tasked with hunting down a group of rogue androids who have taken to the streets of Los Angles.



That's really all there is to the plot, but the story actually has a lot going on. There's no problem with a story having layers, but the problem is that a lot of it isn't concrete and so it's very difficult to describe in written form. There are long stretches of the movie that go without hearing a word of dialogue, just letting you soak in what's been going on in the plot so far and making your own judgement as to what, if anything, the main character feels about it. These segments of time are strangely absorbing because it forces you be involved in the plot in order to make anything out of the movie. If not thinking during a movie is your thing this is definitely not the one for you. Even moviegoers who like smarter stuff like Inception or Dark City might have a rough time. At least they give some exposition and peal back plot layers every once and awhile after keeping you in the dark for an extended period of time. That particular baby got thrown out of the bathwater of the first cut's mistakes. Deckard used to have a voice over that explained crucial details of the plot and characters which was never replaced and which is why those long scenes of nothing but silence are there. However, while some less ambiguity would've been nice I'm very glad they decided to keep things vague. A narration would've just ruined the entire thing and made the movie less intellectually involved, so bravo for the dedication I suppose.



These moments of silence make the film feel really slow moving, which I remember being annoyed with the first time I watched it back in high school. However, after having gone through multiple films in multiple genres throughout multiple decades, I find it's slow pace to endow the film with a sort of richness, letting you soak in the world which has been created and the characters who inhabit it until you're completely immersed.



However, I have some big problems with how this fictional world is set up, more specifically how they explain the androids. In the film, the guy who designs the robots says that they give them memories so that forming emotions will have less of a psychological effect, allowing them to be more easily controlled. My question is: why do these things have capacity for emotion in the first place? Why make something so intelligent that it can form emotions if you're just going to use them to pick up boxes, fight in wars and have sex with people? Why, in practical terms, would emotions be needed for any of those jobs? Why not just make them without free will, only doing what they're told like the robots in I, Robot (the book, not the movie)? It still doesn't make any sense to me and I'm pretty sure the only reason they did that is so they could get the theme across.



I'm still not sure why AI rights is such a popular theme for science fiction because even though I'm no Elon Musk, by my calculations we are centuries away from anything even close to like this happening. Or am I taking it too literally? Are the androids supposed to be metaphors for animal rights or something?



Most of the characters are pretty boring for inhabiting such an interesting world. Deckard is basically just a PI out of a Chandler story except with the added benefit of Harrison Ford charm and his sexy lady friend is just a femme fatal. None of the other characters have a lot of personality either. I couldn't tell you anything about Pris, one of the other androids, outside of "sexy" and I couldn't tell you anything Sebastian except that he's lonely and dumb. However, there's one saving grace to the entire character line up and that's Roy Batty, the leader of the androids. He's imposing and threatening, but also well spoken, articulate and cultured, spouting poetry as he slaughters his victims.



The fact that Roy Batty is the best character in the film probably has to do with the fact that the actor improvised all his speeches, which segways us nicely into talking about the screenplay. It's actually kind of crappy. In my mind, a good screenplay isn't one with slick dialogue or memorable speeches; it's one that paves the way for the director to tell the story in a visual way, ideally to a point where the audience would know what was going on even if the film was on mute. The screenplay for Blade Runner, though, is almost entirely dialogue. At one point, I turned my computer on mute to test my hypothesis and while it helped that I knew what the scene was about, I couldn't tell what anybody was saying and it was a fairly significant plot dump. Why do screenwriters always feel the need to make the scripts entirely dialogue? Yeah, sure, people mostly talk in real life instead of trying to tell each other things visually. The thing we have missed, however, is that this isn't real life. It's a freaking movie, a visual medium that encourages visual storytelling above all else, dialogue being used as a last resort only. On behalf of my incredibly petty hang-ups, please get your crap together, Hollywood!



I also have problems with the pacing in some of the scenes. Like I said, I like the slower tone because it's used to immerse the audience in the world of the story, but a slower tone is completely inappropriate in the movie's climactic fight scene. In the scene, Batty is chasing Deckard because he killed Pris. However, right in the middle of the chase, we cut to Batty slowly morning Pris, even though he already did that before the chase, bringing the scene to a screeching halt. It could've been an exciting chase filled with suspense and thrills, but just ended up being kind of boring.



Technical

The technical side of things is a bit hit and miss to me, so let's start with the good.



The set design is the best thing in the movie, combining then modern day Los Angles with a futuristic feel. All the scenes set on the city streets feel lived in and dirty, with flashing neon signs and advertisements screaming at you from the walls. As I'm writing this down, I'm fairly impressed at how aptly they were able to capture the perspective of somebody walking through a place like New York City; dirty, loud, overly crowded and having consumerism stuffed down your throat. The set design in general reminds me a lot of the two good Alien movies: then contemporary technology made to look like it could actually be used to create futuristic machines. The computers are all bulky, the smaller technology is jerky and looks delicate as hell and the cars all look like you just took a normal car and added jetpacks in place of wheels.



The lighting also helps, though I won't say there's much diversity in it. The lower levels are all shot in sharp blue lighting to make it look cold and the upper levels of the buildings are shot in sharp orange lighting to signify heat. However, these two constantly used colors fit the noir tone of the story and help to bring the world together along with the gorgeous set design.



However, with the lighting we see a few crow's feet emerge with the editing. Since most of the scenes use one of these two colors with the exact same intensity of light with no changes whatsoever, sometimes it can be hard to tell what you're cutting to. For example, after Deckard kills an android we cut to him going straight to an outdoor food stand and getting something to eat. The problem was that I had no idea how long that was supposed to have been. Was that a couple of minutes? An hour? I don't know because the time of day never seems to change. Again, it's all to get across the noir feeling, but it makes it very difficult to tell when we're time jumping. I also have problems with when they decide to end a scene. A lot of times they don't allow whatever just happened in the scene to sink in or let it resonate with the audience, but sometimes this movie will just cut away only a second after something just happened, only giving us time to register what happened, but not enough time for it to sink in. It doesn't happen too often, but it's distracting when it does.



The music is ok. It fits the sci-fi, 80s tone but it all kind of sounds the same except for some really out of place singing in a few of the pieces of music. None of it is too memorable, either, except for the credits music. However, what it lacks in memorability it makes up for in functionality. In a lot of scenes there's very little to no background noise; no cars going by, people talking or even the sound of rain even though it's constantly raining in the film. The music substitutes for the ambient noise, setting the correct tone for each scene. I can't say I've ever seen that done before, but I like it.



Cinematography is pretty good, with the camera mostly being kept completely static, except for one or two shots. I noticed that a lot of times, actors would be alone inside the frame except in certain points, which gave me this kind of isolated feeling. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but it was a good addition to the already dirty, depressing world that's been built. There are also times where we're looking at the main characters from a way off or behind something in the shot, almost like we're spying on what's going on. I'm not sure if it really fits in with the rest of the camerawork, but it's still a nice touch.



The acting is good from the whole cast, despite most of them having pretty much zero character to work with. Harrison Ford plays grumpy really well, so having him play the typical grumpy cop makes a lot of sense. The actress who plays Pris is great, able to switch from deceptively innocent to creepily sexy with ease. However, just like Roy Batty was the best character, his actor Rutger Hauer gives the best performance in the film. It's probably because he was allowed to improvise a lot of his dialogue and therefore was able to give Batty a lot more personality, which I should really be angry at the screenwriters for, but I have no idea how they could've done better than Hauer. He has a lot of screen presence, perfect line delivery and puts a ton of emotion into every scene he's in. I feel like I could watch this performance every day and find something new and interesting in it.



Summary: Blade Runner is a confusingly flawed masterpiece that I'm pretty sure I should watch again. It's pretentious, yet genuinely engrossing. Blandly written, but superbly acted. The editing's choppy, but the sets are spectacular. I still don't understand the ending, but I want to understand it. In the end, I recommend Blade Runner, at least to not be ostracized by your film nerd friends and at most to have a film experience few other movies can give.