Blade Runner
I have to confess that I have seen some of this movie. I saw the Final Cut in a theater back in 2007. Except…I fell asleep. I present that not as a statement about the quality of the movie. I’ve fallen asleep during an embarrassing amount of movies. I offer this up just to explain why it’s on my Top 100 Movie quest. I made a promise to myself that if I can’t describe most of the plot in detail, I have to watch it.
Blade Runner is a very influential movie. The art direction has inspired countless movies and an entire aesthetic, Cyberpunk. As such, it's very hard to review it objectively. Additionally, this is a film notorious for having multiple cuts. I think there is somewhere in the neighborhood of five possible cuts you can watch on home video. I tried to keep things pure (so I thought) by only watching the theatrical cut to try to emulate how it would feel to see it in 1982.
What a mistake.
The narration is terrible. I could see it having charm to make this more of a Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade story, but the narration (which it seems was added at the request of the studio) is overlong, too “explain-y” and doesn't really fit.
Blade Runner is about a future (although I guess it's technically the past now) where lifelike androids have been created and are used for dangerous or undesirable work. The problem is that several of these androids have become sentient and no longer want to do work, but want to experience what life has to offer. Special police officers known as “Blade Runners” track down rogue androids and decommission them. Harrison Ford is one of those Blade Runners and is considered one of the best.
The structure of the movie plays very similar to a noir detective movie. It seems at odds at times with the science fiction trappings of the story (something I imagine the studio wanted to focus on more) and the existential questions that several characters muse on at times, which can make it a bit hard to watch.
All in all, this is a landmark piece of cinema and should be watched.
Position
See It but probably a non-theatrical cut