Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1982), directed by Ridley Scott

The best science fiction gives a vision of the future. Fritz Lang's Metropolis presents a heaven for the ruling class, a hell for the proles. Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey presents a future governed by the vacuousness of humanity. Star Trek and Star Wars are more hopeful, presenting technology as capable of solving many of man's ills. Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker presents us with a minimalist post-apocalyptic world, using only a field of weeds, a few abandoned buildings, and an inch of water on the floor. And then there is Ridley Scott.

As if Alien wasn't gloomy enough, Blade Runner he presents us the Earth of the not-too-distant future. This future Los Angeles is eternally night (because of pollution?), dirty, and dangerous. The buildings of the future are monumentally huge, and there are other trappings of technology like flying cars and genetically-engineered slaves. But I certainly wouldn't want to live there. Neither does anyone else. Apparently L.A.'s residents are fleeing for the "off-world colonies."

Though this has the trappings of a science fiction film, it's actually nothing less than a futuristic film noir. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a 21st-century Sam Spade. He is a blade runner, a sort of bounty hunter assigned to flush out and "retire" rogue replicants (superstrong human clones). Despite such a glamorous occupation, his life is extraordinarily dismal: his apartment is a dingy mess, a futuristic version of Popeye Doyle's digs from The French Connection. In the middle of all this is a piano with photographs out of someone's past.

One day, he is given a new assignment (his boss is played by M. Emmet Walsh, who could play a police chief in any century). He is to hunt down four replicants who killed another blade runner. It seems, however, that these particular replicants are trying to overcome their all-too-brief lifespan of four years by coercing their creators into helping them. Deckard also finds himself falling in love with one of them (Sean Young).

There actually isn't a whole lot of plot to this film. Essentially, it's just Deckard looking for the replicants and taking them out one by one. Loving Raechel (the replicant he loves) helps him ease his pain and conscience. Eventually, he corner the leader, nearly dying in the process. He lives to run away with Raechel, but, it is unlikely that they will escape.

This is a film for atmosphere, for a unique version of the future. Perhaps it will appeal only to the cult film audience, but it is a must-see for all film buffs as the progenitor of the "nasty future" films.

Three and a half stars