Blade Runner

Tania Says:

Again, another movie I had seen once and that was awhile ago. Apparently though I enjoyed it enough back then to buy it and never once open it but leave it on the DVD shelf to collect dust. This project gave me a chance to spend 15 minutes trying to open the shrink wrap and all the sticker things. And the final verdict – I do like this movie quite a bit!

The story is basically that age old Sci Fi story of man creating a machine that is too smart and too human and then trying to figure out how to destroy said machines. Blade Runner does it really well though and adds a more human element by making the machines, well, humans. Actually Replicants that look just like humans and act just like humans (unlike HAL in 2001 or the Robots in I, Robot which I haven’t seen but those robots don’t look human in the previews.) Harrison Ford is a Blade Runner which is a cop who “retires” Replicants. There are 5 running free and he needs to work his magic. Four of them are running around reeking havoc because they want to know how long they will live and of course the fifth (played by Sean Young) doesn’t know she is a Replicant and Harrison Ford ends up falling in love with her.

Ok, the love thing between Deckert (Harrison Ford) and Rachel (Sean Young) is a little creepy to me. First of all, he kind of forces her to stay and kiss him and stuff when she really looked like she wanted to leave and then he starts telling her what to say. That creeped me out. It was like his own personal Buffybot so I question if he really loves her or just wants a sex robot. But really, the movie isn’t about that.

Rutger Hauer and Daryl Hannah are two of the other Replicants looking for their maker because they don’t want to die. I really ended up feeling for them (not Daryl Hannah because she is annoying) but for Rutger Hauer because they were made by man to be nearly human and so they want to live a human life but can’t. This brings up the deeper issue of man and his obsession with power and creating human life in an unnatural way and the consequences it can create that no one thinks of. But Blade Runner doesn’t get all preachy and boring like I just did but it did put that seed in my mind which is cool. It makes you think without being a “makes you think” kind of movie. The production value is pretty low but I didn’t bother me because I just think it is an all around cool movie.

Josh Says:

I had never seen this movie in it's entirety before, though I'd caught enough pieces of it to have probably watched the whole thing at least once or twice. The problem that I always had catching it on USA at 2:30 in the morning as I drifted off into dreamland (read: passed out after a long night at the bar) was that it always seemed to have been made in such a low budget shoddy way. The special effects, the weird, cheap lenses it was shot in, the lame props, choppy edits and set design all seemed a bit too 'b' grade to entice me to actually sit down and watch the whole thing.

Of course, that's the whole problem. I had never sat down and watched the whole thing. Sure, all of that stuff is still there, it's not exactly a crisp finely tuned machine from an aesthetical perspective, but viewed in it's entirety, this movie pretty much rocked and had me thirsting for a good buddy movie with that great duo Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer. In fact, I don't think I'll ever be able to think of them independently again. It's always going to be Harrison and Rutger for me now.

So, if you're like me and you read the original review by Siskel and Ebert before they sold out or came to their senses or whatever, or maybe have caught only pieces of this movie and thought, "what a cheap piece of cr** who would ever want to watch that trash?". I'd strongly recommend you give the movie, the whole movie another shot.