#23: Blade Runner

Important note for those who are keeping score: we watched the Final Cut edition.  (And based on what I hear about the other editions, I am very glad we did.)

In the metropolitan labyrinth of 2019 Los Angeles, 'blade runner' Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) hunts down genetically-engineered humanoids - 'replicants' who have broken free from off-world labor colonies and run loose in the streets where their supreme intelligence and physical abilities make them highly dangerous to the human race they rebel against.  Deckard's mission: to recognize them and take them down.  And yet, that pervasive ethical dilemma...

Director Ridley Scott achieves a sort of nirvana for the top elite here.  In an almost MacGuyver-esque turn, he takes a very tired and overdone concept with heavy-hanging morals, a clumsily unsubtle script, and a cast who can't seem to muster up the energy to care about their characters...and not only manages to spin them into a tapestry of gorgeous-and-painful-and-painfully-gorgeous images and almost impenetrable layers of meaning, but also to use them to his advantage in setting the film's dystopian tone.  Blade Runner plays out like a dream, with disorienting cuts and surreal, kaleidoscopic imagery.

We couldn't stop talking about it afterward.  In this cut particularly, Scott leaves several important questions left hanging.  The answers are all buried somewhere in the film, but there are more answers than there are questions.  A narrative that appears to be straightforward can be reanalyzed and restructured to give each scene new context and meaning.  And at the same time, the expansive and dizzying futuristic cityscapes and high-octane action scenes are also a visual delight, so I can turn my inner academic off and yes, still enjoy the ride.