Danielle Blade Runner
July 2nd 2009 06:09
Dir: Ridley Scott
Genre: Action, SF, Love Story, Action
Running Time: 117 mins
This groundbreaking, hauntingly filmed, astonishing work is without a doubt a masterpiece. Looking back this film set the mark for all ‘histories of the future’, and few films have actually achieved the level of sophistication, drama or brilliance that Scott achieved with this film. Based on the story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick, this film goes where no film had gone before. The many awards and nominations it received bear testament to how good it was at the time and it remains so to this day.
This was the first time we had seen a futuristic world which has the old world in it. Shops, market stalls, old buildings. Flying cop cars and futuristic technology sit comfortably within the seedy world of law enforcement and life on the street. Scott imagines a world for us that is simultaneously familiar and strange, he dared be the first to imagine a future in which Japanese was as common as English on the street, a psychologically threatening idea at the time in the US., (Joss Wheedon’s 'Firefly' does it with Chinese and English).It is still a film of its time though with its haunting 1980s synthesised soundtrack.
Harrison Ford (Deckard) did a brilliant job as the ‘Blade Runner’ seeking to terminate the ‘Skin Jobs’(Replicants) who had illegally come to earth seeking their creator. Scott’s 'Film Noir' look for SF films is now copied far and wide – so different from the shiny world of Star Wars or Star Trek movies. It has more in common with Howard Hawks ‘The Big Sleep’ than a contemporary SF film. The beautiful Sean Young who plays the prototype replicant Rachael and Deckard’s eventual love interest is as beautiful as the young Lauren Baccall. Her 1940’s look is pure art. The ensemble cast of Hauer, Hannah, Olmos, Emet-Walsh and Sanderson produced a deep, believable and disturbing look into a future that might be dependent on robotics. Now where have I come across that idea in recent years?
In Scott’s extended version he ends the film sooner than the cinema cut, allowing the audience to ask the question ‘Is Deckard a replicant?” This kind of hovered in the original, but Scott has given us more clues to what he thinks. It’s wonderful to watch, to look at and to get drawn in. In the Bluray version the sound quality is upgraded, more work has been done to polish the film using the latest CGI techniques and the effect is truly stunning.
This film has still got it.
Rating: 5/5
Genre: Action, SF, Love Story, Action
Running Time: 117 mins
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
This groundbreaking, hauntingly filmed, astonishing work is without a doubt a masterpiece. Looking back this film set the mark for all ‘histories of the future’, and few films have actually achieved the level of sophistication, drama or brilliance that Scott achieved with this film. Based on the story “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep” by Philip K. Dick, this film goes where no film had gone before. The many awards and nominations it received bear testament to how good it was at the time and it remains so to this day.
This was the first time we had seen a futuristic world which has the old world in it. Shops, market stalls, old buildings. Flying cop cars and futuristic technology sit comfortably within the seedy world of law enforcement and life on the street. Scott imagines a world for us that is simultaneously familiar and strange, he dared be the first to imagine a future in which Japanese was as common as English on the street, a psychologically threatening idea at the time in the US., (Joss Wheedon’s 'Firefly' does it with Chinese and English).It is still a film of its time though with its haunting 1980s synthesised soundtrack.
Harrison Ford (Deckard) did a brilliant job as the ‘Blade Runner’ seeking to terminate the ‘Skin Jobs’(Replicants) who had illegally come to earth seeking their creator. Scott’s 'Film Noir' look for SF films is now copied far and wide – so different from the shiny world of Star Wars or Star Trek movies. It has more in common with Howard Hawks ‘The Big Sleep’ than a contemporary SF film. The beautiful Sean Young who plays the prototype replicant Rachael and Deckard’s eventual love interest is as beautiful as the young Lauren Baccall. Her 1940’s look is pure art. The ensemble cast of Hauer, Hannah, Olmos, Emet-Walsh and Sanderson produced a deep, believable and disturbing look into a future that might be dependent on robotics. Now where have I come across that idea in recent years?
In Scott’s extended version he ends the film sooner than the cinema cut, allowing the audience to ask the question ‘Is Deckard a replicant?” This kind of hovered in the original, but Scott has given us more clues to what he thinks. It’s wonderful to watch, to look at and to get drawn in. In the Bluray version the sound quality is upgraded, more work has been done to polish the film using the latest CGI techniques and the effect is truly stunning.
This film has still got it.
Rating: 5/5
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