Blade Runner

Wonderful atmosphere, great execution that makes it look a quarter of its age, excellent actors, several very intense scenes, but terribly boring at the same time. This is what the old cliché of form over substance looks like. Blade Runner failed to win me over, even after a recent second chance (2011). (15/01/2009)

A sci-fi cult-classic for true connoisseurs. I remember years ago when I was at the premiere of the Director's Cut, there were three of us sitting in the cinema. Enjoying the visual beauty of Blade Runner on the big screen back then was a completely different experience than a cropped image on TV. It's not easy viewing, it's not popcorn entertainment. The whole film follows an ambient mood that has to be felt. And if you see Blade Runner with perfect sound, you can really enjoy Vangelis' masterful soundtrack and catch the various sonic flourishes in some scenes, like all sorts of whispering or ambient sounds that add to the mood of the film. Ridley Scott created a fascinating, dark, futuristic world, and even if he hadn’t made anything else after that, he would still have been an immortal director. (26/05/2002)

The genre of film science-fiction in its most mature form. Scott was able to combine excellent tricks, quality actors and, most importantly, the characteristically intellectual Dick story into a fascinating "noir" detective story of the future. The atmosphere is greatly helped by Vangelis's music and also by the fact that, rather than an action-developing plot, the film professes dialogue and slow movement forward. The fictional world around you thus acquires plasticity and, with a good constellation, engulfs you and imprints itself forever on the soul. And the story of humanity/inhumanity/artificiality is becoming more topical, not the other way around. Interestingly, the film does not win over viewers "seasonally", but gains them over time. Which, of course, is a great compliment to its qualities. (27/01/2004)

I said to myself: "Don't turn it on. You're up early tomorrow. Can’t you hear school calling? You need to get some sleep. It's nine o'clock. If you press play, you won't turn off the computer until eleven. Hardly a full night's sleep! So be a good girl and turn it off." I replied to my schizophrenic self: "Okay," and pressed play. Often when I go to bed with a head full of questions, I wake up refreshed in the morning. What is it, I wonder? Tomorrow – and I know this for a fact – I will be rested. For I've had a few bugs planted in my head. I'll lie in bed with my eyes closed and reflect on what a wondrous world I've visited. I ask myself: "Their world was so artificial that it seemed the only living creature on the planet was human. What was left there for such a person?" And my other self answers pointedly: "Feelings. Emotions." Then I run my fingers over my temples. "Maybe that's why they wanted to kill the replicants. That even the last real thing they had was appropriated by organometallic compounds, if I put it that way." I fall asleep thinking about that dark and rainy world. Weird. I still don't understand what’s making me give the movie 4 stars. I'm confused – I feel nothing. Just neurons transmitting impulses. Maybe it's because Blade Runner gave me inspiration. It gives me something to dream about, think about, and write about (and damn do I love doing that!). Still; it was so morose... (09/11/2008)

It is unbelievable how, by removing needless monologs, making an amendment here and there and by making a little change to the final few seconds can turn a fairly solid sci-fi movie into one of the most atmospheric, hypnotic gems of world cinema. And this is clearly the most influential movie ever, because it influenced all sci-fi that followed it, no exaggeration. An ingenious, dismal noir vision of the future that provokes questions to this day. I don’t necessarily mean questions like whether or not Deckard is a replicant; which seems to differ from version to version, and this ambivalence is due to the fact that Hampton and Ford always acted as if he is, while Ridley acted like he wasn’t, just to be difficult. But more, this movie poses those “eternal" questions such as where is the border between life and humanity and, primarily, whether it matters at all who is or isn’t a replicant. This puts Blade Runner side by side with The Last Temptation of Christ, rather than any movies of the sci-fi genre. This isn’t a movie for everybody (that’s right, it’s s-l-o-w and taciturn, for instance, at the end Deckard doesn’t say a word for a whole twenty minutes despite being on screen constantly), but those who find their way to it will certainly never wash out this gem from their memory like tears in the rain... Original movie theater version: 3/5, Director’s Cut 1992: 5/5, Final Cut 2007: 5/5 (17/01/2008)