Blade Runner (1982)

Los Angeles in 2019 is oddly empty. Yes, the market areas are full of people, but where do the real people live? The big company that makes the Replicants, it only has the owner and J.F.?

Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a retired Blade Runner. He's asked to do one more job, I guess, and he agrees, I guess. Why? What's in it for him, or does he just fall into doing it?

The Rogue Replicants are dangerous, which might be why Deckard is okay hunting them down. But Rachael (Sean Young) isn't? What does he feel about her, other than the attraction that a man would feel for a woman? This is where the "object" point of view doesn't help, because it would be nice to know why Deckard becomes so invested in, well, a robot. She's not human, but she's enough for Deckard. This, again, makes me wonder where all the humans are. J.F. (William Sanderson) has to make friends just to have friends, and we never see Deckard interact with anyone but marketplace vendors and the police.

Yes, I think the setting of the world is cool, but like a lot of settings, it also just seems to lack something -- like how people actually live. I get the atmosphere of it being dark and rainy throughout the movie, but then it makes me wonder if in 2019, is there a reason the sun never shines? And why does it rain so much in Los Angeles, a town, as far as I know, isn't known for rainy days without end.

I have some questions about the ending, like does Batty (Rutger Hauer) just turn himself off? Does Pris (Daryl Hannah) simply malfunction. And for that matter, as "perfect" as these Replicants are supposed to be, why is it so obvious, really, who's human and who's not? It's not really a surprise, for example, that Rachael is a Replicant, even though supposedly Deckard has to quiz her a lot longer than normal to determine that she's not human.

Undoubtedly groundbreaking in some ways, but I prefer a movie like Dark City (1998).

Rating: 4/5 stars

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