Blade Runner
Its plot is in fact flat and cliched. Let two generations of film scholars hang me for saying that but it’s true.
Grade: C+
Ridley Scott doesn’t plot his films. He paints them. Story for him is often secondary to imagery and philosophy. Blade Runner is the film that has kept audiences going to see his films for four decades and it is the purest example of Scott’s baroque style where the workmanship is more in the ornamentation than the architecture.
Its plot is in fact flat and cliched. Let two generations of film scholars hang me for saying that but it’s true. An ex-cop (Harrison Ford’s Rick Deckard) is roped into hunting down a band of fugitives by his ex-boss, finds the fugitives, kills them, and along the way falls in love with an icy and gorgeous dame (Sean Young’s Rachael). I dare you to find a plot that’s more obviously Noir. The only difference is this Noir is set in a futuristic LA where the sun doesn’t ever shine, cars fly past skyscraper-high chimneys that exhale flames, and cops like Deckard called Blade Runners hunt down artificial humans called replicants when the replicants step out of line.
There is nothing wrong with using familiar storylines as clear, brightly lit entrances to films. That’s the advantage of established genre conventions. Christopher Nolan did it with the heist film in Inception, but Blade Runner does not take the sharp turns and sudden drops that Inception does. It’s a straight line until the very end. In the beginning, the replicants are on the run looking for their creator and Deckard is hunting them. In the middle, the replicants are on the run looking for their creator and Deckard is hunting them. The conflict stays at the same temperature until the last few scenes. That’s when Scott turns the gas nob right up.
In the last half an hour of the film, the replicants’ leader Roy murders his maker by crushing the scientist’s eyes and head with his bare hands as they’re seated on the scientist’s white-linen bed amidst flaming candles in gold candelabras that are spread throughout the scientist’s bedchamber. Roy then returns to his hideout where Deckard is waiting for him and chases Deckard through the crumbling building as rain from the storm outside seeps and floods through the walls. It’s like the building is dissolving into tears. Tears that will be lost in the rain, like Roy’s memories as his famous last words go.
Roy is an artificial human with memories. Does that make him real? Does it even matter? I tore Blade Runnerapart in my high school English class to find its portents and conundrums of artificial vs ‘real’ people. There’s plenty there. Deckard asks his boss what if the test they’ve got to tell if someone’s a replicant doesn’t work and Rachael asks him “Have you ever taken [the test] yourself?” Without the test, where is the line between the real person and the fake one? Can you even be sure you’re real until you’ve taken the test? If you can’t be, doesn’t that mean you’re real?
These questions might be churning inside Deckard’s skull. It would explain why he quit being a Blade Runner, his disgust when Bryan dismisses the replicants as “skin jobs,” and why he buys a full bottle of spirits after killing one of the replicants. Has he just killed a machine or a real person? Deckard might be asking himself this question but he’s only asking himself and it doesn’t stop him from hunting down the rest of the replicants. The question spends the whole film floating in between the lines.
Perhaps the subtlety should be praised. Scott’s lavish visual style certainly should be but the film’s one-note plot deserves the loss of a few stars.
Hmm, I think you are being a bit harsh, but yes, there is an element of "artishness" that does pervade and sometimes slow down BR. What I LOVE about it is that it is one of the very early forerunners of a wealth of dystopian future fiction and in many ways sets the standard for a dynamic that is seen in numberless Sci Fi's since - Dr Who, Foundation, The Expanse, Judge Dredd - think all those busy dark fraught and frenetic alleyways and street markets, with the elite living above in high towers. I just love the way that it sets a benchmark that so many others derive elements from. I'm talking about the original here of course, haven't seen the sequel. So many years after the original, its place is in a historic rather than a cinematic space it seems to be.