Movie review: Blade Runner (The Final Cut)

Can we be ABSOLUTELY SURE this is the final cut? Huh? Can we?

by John P. Meyer

What the bloody Hell, you might ask (if you were both inquisitive and prone to cursing), are theaters around the country doing scheduling yet another iteration of Blade Runner to play on their big screens, in their big expensive prime-time-for-holiday-film-fare auditoriums? Referencing this product literature, we can point to five different versions of the film including the current release. What is it about this dark, drizzly, violent and arguably somewhat sappy cyber-noir love story that continues to fascinate? (I mean, it never has generated much box office.)

Well, for one thing it's on the top 10 best sci fi film lists of everyone in existence, ranking in position number uno more often than not. For another, 2007 marks the 25th anniversary of film's original release, which demands some sort of hoopla. And then there's the fact that director Ridley Scott still considers his quarter-century-old handiwork worthy of continued effort (he shot new footage for both the Joanna Cassidy/Zhora death scene and the snake dealer interview sequence, and of course he spent untold hours re-editing the digitally-remastered footage into this "swear-to-God, cross-my-heart-and- hope-to-die, last-pass director's cut" version). The biggest determiner of all may be the fact that the movie is due to release on HD-DVD and Blu-ray (in addition to regular DVD format) as part of a "Five-Disc Ultimate Collector's Edition" on December 18, and the limited theatrical release will serve to prime that cash-generating pump.

Story-wise, those who've seen the film before (once, twice or several times) will encounter nothing new: it's still a thoughtful, character-driven, earth-bound futuristic thriller about androids (replicants) gone rogue, and the officially-sanctioned assassins (blade runners) assigned to hunt them down and shut them up - permanently. The short-hair twist, too, remains the same: when man-created beings develop sensibilities and self-awareness, at what point can they be considered as human as the humans who created them? And who gets to make that determination? (And what happens to a replicant's memories after he/she/it dies?)

If you haven't seen any of the post-1982 versions of the film, you'll perhaps notice the omission of the sugar-coated ending which follows Deckard and Rachael's progress out of the city and into the forest where they'll be spending whatever years remain to them in sylvan splendor. Otherwise, you'll note that this new print is flawlessly clean, the scene transitions are smoother than in prior versions and several notable gaffes have been corrected (e.g., the number of bullet holes in the body of Zhora now remains consistent from the sequence where she's being shot to the sequence where Deckard and the cops are standing over her body in the aftermath).

What's interesting and fun is to take a 2007-eyed look at the future Los Angeles envisaged in such detail by the filmmakers of 1982 and project forward to 2019, which is when the events in the film are supposed to take place. In this way the movie can be seen as a time capsule of futurist speculation, and from where we float in the middle of this particular timestream it appears that there are some interesting areas of divergence from reality.

For instance, personal communication devices never seem to have caught on in this decadent alternate future, while street corner public phones seem to be ubiquitous. Furthermore, it's clear that those surgeon general warnings on cigarette packs haven't done much good: almost every major character in the movie smokes like a stack, perhaps to warm their lungs against the ever-present rain - which may very well reflect the effects of global warming, whereby tropical conditions are moving ever northward from equatorial realms.

And while we're talking big picture, the city of L.A. had better get their skyscraper construction program in gear, because in order to build up to Blade Runner's 2019 levels they'll have to construct their labor unionized asses off for the next 12 years. (I mean, the steel and aluminum structural materials alone are going to be hard for our current manufacturing resources to churn out - unless we're outsourcing steel from China in enormous quantities, which of course remains a possibility...)

The atmospheric sets are still immersive and dense and layered with insane detail - how the set decorators put all this reality together on a 30 day shooting schedule (see the HISTORY tab, PART 2, under menu item THE FILM, here) remains one of the great accomplishments of cinema.

Photographer's quibble: regardless of advances in imaging technology, it's doubtful that the basic physics of resolution can ever be circumvented (one can't create information where none exists to begin with), and thus when Deckard has his home computer zoom in (by voice command) on a 4 x 6 printed photograph of a room to the point where he's able to see fingernail-sized shadow details, those of us familiar with the limitations of resolving power are apt to find ourselves snorting derisively (internally, I mean).

For my money - regardless of the version - it all comes down to Roy (Rutger Hauer), stripped to the waist, winding down to non-existence on the rain-soaked roof of the Bradbury Building, waxing poetic about attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion (wherever that might be), as Deckard (Harrison Ford) - gasping for breath and astonished to find himself still among the living - tries to appear inconspicuous. "I've seen things you people wouldn't believe," Roy intones.

RANDOM RUMINATIONS:

* Don't ask Leon about his mother

* Blood dripping into tequila won't harm the flavor much

* The owl is watching

* Does the Vangelis dreamy-dreamy theme music hold up? (Could we blade running veterans stand to part with it, or is it so integrated into the film experience that its removal/replacement would amount to evisceration?)

STRATEGIC INSANITY: "Queen to bishop six? Ridiculous!" - Tyrell (Joe Turkel) to J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson)

FATHER KNOWS BEST?: "I want more life, father." - Roy to Tyrell

REPLICANT REGRET: "All those moments lost in time - like tears in rain." - Roy, on the Bradbury rooftop