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This is my all-time-favourite film. No exceptions.
In Blade Runner, Ridley Scott set a very high standard which, in my opinion, no other sci-fi film has been able to top. After viewing it you will be able to point to virtually every science fiction movie since which has stolen a little bit of Scott’s vision.
Harrison Ford plays Rick Deckard, a retired Blade Runner who has to rejoin the force to track down four escaped Nexus-6 model replicants who have arrived on earth from off-world. These androids are exceptionally lifelike and believe they are human. They are even programmed with false memories of a past they never experienced, and are given photographs of family they never had. They are also built to die: to last for a very short predetermined time.
The four ‘skin-jobs’ are here on earth to find their maker and ask why their lives are so short, why they have their memories, why they are here.
And this is the what the film is really about.
As humans we often look for answers to these questions. Philosophers, priests and Shamen have been searching for an answer to the question of what life is all about. Ridley Scott explores this Big Question by turning the tables and asking what if WE are the makers? What answers could we find to give our creations?
The leader of the replicants, Roy Batty, is played by Rutger Hauer. A scene very near the end shows us that when he was at the moment of his death, Batty realised exactly how precious life is. He gives a speech which reduces me to tears every time I hear it. In fact, I get teary even thinking about it. It’s no surprise that I fell in love with Rutger during this film.
There is romance – Deckard falls for the niece of Tyrell, the head of the corporation who manufactures the replicants. She is a replicant herself and there is always the unanswered question of whether Deckard is also an android. The smart money says yes, and I have to agree with them.
The movie is set in Los Angeles of 2019, a place where only the poor and physically imperfect live. There is constant darkness and rain and it looks a thoroughly depressing place to live. The word dystopian could have been invented just to describe this environment.
Although the film is based on the Phillip K Dick novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it is probably more different from it than alike.
Please watch this movie. It is a classic and thoroughly deserves being in virtually every Top 100 poll around.
Starring Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer.
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