BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is a film directed by Ridley Scott from a script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples. It stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, with Edward James Olmos, James Turkel, Darryl Hannah, Brion James, Joanna Cassidy, and M. Emmet Walsh. Production designer is Lawrence G. Paull, art director David Snyder, consultant Sid Mead, and special-effects by Donald Trumbrull. Cinematography is by Jordan Cronenweth. Music by Vangelis. Based on the novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Philip K. Dick. Rated R, for violence.
BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is Ridley Scott's 1992 version of what the 1982 film would have looked like if it had survived its preview screenings and a nervous studio. Gone is the Raymond-Chandler-style voice-over to explain it all to us. Gone is the sappy ending. Added is a key dream sequence (that presaged, as it turns out, Scott's 1986 fantasy LEGEND), the rest of the Vangelis score, and some additional footage to several key scenes. The director's cut makes this great cult film only greater, more impressive, more stimulating, more interesting.
It is probably pointless to try to review BLADE RUNNER as one would a new film, even though there a lot of people who have never seen even the original theatrical release. (It was, lest we forget, a huge box office bomb in 1982, being completely swallowed up by the audience rush to E.T., which had opened in the same month.) Mostly, I am here now to tell you that this is one of the greatest sf films ever made. And that if you are near one of the 60-some U.S. cities that opened BLADE RUNNER this last Friday September 11, you simply must go see it. Not only is the film wonderful (for reasons I will touch on in a minute), but it is an energizing experience merely to be in the same block as a venue like Seattle's Egyptian Theater and to experience the huge crowds outside, a line endlessly snaking around the building and down the alley to the next street, another crowd of people who have just gotten out of the last showing and who obviously don't want to leave, who want to stand on the sidewalk and talk about what they have just seen. And inside to feel the excited hubbub of the audience waiting, waiting, to hear them applaud the dimming of the house lights, to hear them applaud loudly the final credits. This is what movie-going is supposed to be about: excitement, stimulation, satisfaction. I haven't felt quite the same rush of group anticipation since the original STAR WARS opened. By comparison, opening night audiences for BATMAN were bored and noncommittal.
As for what makes BLADE RUNNER great, allow me to sketch out of few beginning points, without pretending to exhaust the subject. For one thing, this movie has a great theme, the greatest human theme: life, death, and their meaning. What does it mean to live, to die? Rutger Hauer's speech in the rain on what he has seen, on the memories that will die with him, is deeply moving, coming especially as it does from the ostensible villain of the piece. And that's another source of BLADE RUNNER's greatness, its ambiguity, its willingness not to explain. It shows and lets the audience put it together, on the fly, as it were; this quality was not seen in 1982 as a strength by those preview audiences who were reportedly confused by the story. It's hard for me to imagine that being a problem today; certainly, my partner Lyndol, who literally knew nothing about BLADE RUNNER except that was an sf film I wanted to go to, followed it perfectly and without the film noir narration that had Harrison Ford say such inanities as "What the hell was happening to me?" Putting it another way, BLADE RUNNER is an sf film that treats its audience as adults, intelligent adults.
Another source of greatness is the look of the film. Seldom will one be exposed to such a detailed, imaginative, and intriguing design. The now famous Scott look is still fresh and effective here: the wet black streets, the steam, the chiaroscuro, the sourceless beams of light, the random craziness in the background and edges of the main action. The eye and mind are condemned to miss so much even while picking up so many delightful minutiae. They make the world of 2019 L.A., with its flying billboards, its 700-storey arcologies, its medieval street life, open markets and open sewers, the grungy soba bars, the dwarf scavengers, the open bonfires complete and whole and real. Everything about the design is rich and satisfying. For those who know the film, I have only to point to the chase scene that ends with crashes through multiple windows to find an example of the visual imagination that so mightily informs BLADE RUNNER.
A third area of achievement that sets BLADE RUNNER off from almost all other sf films is its commitment to examing relationships, to allow long sequences of characters establishing their characters, establishing their relationships. These sequences are not flaccid, they do not deflate the tension of the prolonged chase that is most of BLADE RUNNER. They are themselves basic to the theme and story, basic to the adultness of the film.
Of course, there are some flaws. Most especially, I object to Sebastian's toys. They are too cute, as well as too obviously Little People in fancy dress. Cuteness is out of place in this world. Even the nerdy whimsy of a Sebastian, the genetic designer, should not have been reduced to a reply to the R2D2 kind of sweetness.
Go to BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT. Pay what you must, you will get your money's worth.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney
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