Blade Runner - Director: Ridley Scott (1982)

The purpose of my blog is to review any films I watch since I started this forum but it does seem a little odd to be reviewing an influential 1982 sci-fi classic. However...that's what I'm here for!

I dream about the lift in Sebastian's house quite a lot...my style recently has been based a lot on Sean Young's phenomenal Rachael...and I was six when this film was made and I remember seeing Daryl Hannah's Pris when I was in my early teens and thinking WOW...but I've never watched Blade Runner with a film critic's head on before. Until last night.

Blade Runner is absolutely mesmirising and the opening shot of a brutal Los Angeles skyline in 2019 is still amazing even in today's standards of Avatar. Better in fact. It's chilling and sends thrills up your spine of what is to come. The first 1/2 hr is quite slow paced but it hots up when Harrison Ford's Deckard, a 'blade runner' who hunts down replicants to 'retire them' from service, receives his task to retire four rogue replicants; Rutger Hauer's Batty, Joanna Cassidy's Zhora, Daryl Hannah's Pris and Brion James' Leon.

You feel sad for the replicants; their life span is only four years and Sean Young's character Rachael does not realise that she isn't human until Deckard explains that her memories have been implanted in her. Although the four rogue replicants are violent, they bleed like humans and fight to survive, with Pris and Zhora's exits especially upsetting.

It is then left for the final battle between Deckard and Batty. It features a great act of, well, humanity by Batty and a soliloquy which ends with the words 'Time to die'. Batty here shows that he may perhaps even be more 'human' than Deckard.

It's a great piece of work and has/will stand the test of time. It still looks original, innovative and epic...let's see how Avatar is remembered in 27 years time.