"Shame she won't live. Then again, who does?"- Blade Runner (1982) Review

Blade Runner Review

Director:Ridley Scott

Genre: Science-Fiction 

Codestar30 Rating: 5/10

It's 2019. Humans have extended their reach to outer space, and as a result need robots to do the more dangerous stuff out there. To fill this need companies manufacture robots that completely identical to humans called "Replicants". However, "Replicants" are not allowed on Earth once they've been shipped off to outer space. If they return to Earth then they are hunted down and killed by a special division of the police, the "Blade Runners". 

6 Replicants have escaped back to Earth in an attempt to find their creator, and force him to fix them in order for them to survive longer, killing anyone who gets in their way. Apparently, there's only one man up to the job of tracking them down and taking them out; retired "Blade Runner", Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), who reluctantly returns from retirement to sort them out. 

Overall, this movie is pretty slow-paced, and slightly boring. The exceptions being the brief struggles that occur when Decker catches up with a "Replicant", or a "Replicant" catches up with him, and the somewhat unsettling scene in which Decker and his "Replicant" lover, Rachael (Sean Young), somehow have some sort of freaky robot/human sex. 

The plot is quite hard to follow and a lot of things that are necessary to understanding the story are not established as early as you'd like. You really have to pay attention to understand what's going on. I even had to do some research on what the hell it was all about so I could fully understand it before writing this review.

The acting is fairly wooden, with exception  perhaps to Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), the leader of the band of outlaw "Replicants", but even he is not exactly amazing in my opinion.

However, "Blade Runner" does have one very redeeming feature. The penultimate sequence where Decker has tracked down the final 2 "Replicants", and after killing one, is forced to desperately try and escape from Roy Batty, who has been driven insane by the loss of his fellow "Replicants" and focuses psychopathically on killing Decker in a "Cat-and-mouse" chase through a dark and dusty building. It's very, dramatic, exiting, atmospheric and adrenaline pumping. This is the 20 minute section where "Blade Runner" really comes to life. And based on this section I would strongly recommend watching "Blade Runner". Although you will of course have to watch the rest of the film for it to make sense!