Blade Runner

Warner Bros.
HARRISON FORD hangs on in "Blade Runner."

Time to go back to future in ‘Blade Runner’

“Blade Runner” is one of those movies that keeps coming back.
I’m not saying these are sequels or remakes. It’s the same movie, restored, recut, re-something elsed every few years.
“Blade Runner,” directed by Ridley Scott, has been re-released to the big screen. and any number of times on video.
At one time “Blade Runner” was the reason to buy a now-defunct Laserdisc player. In the 1990s, before DVD, Laserdisc was the way to see movies on television with any sharpness and clarity.
So every few years we are treated to a new version of this 1982 science fiction classic. The most recent version drops the narration by the main character, but adds moments to the love affair he has with a replicant played by Sean Yung.
With each new video technology, we get a new version of “Blade Runner.”
Warner recently released all sorts of versions of the film on the new hybrid DVD formats, Blu-Ray and HD.
You get a couple of different versions of the movie, along with commentaries, special features, a new spatula, well no new spatula, but lots of stuff.
The film looks and sounds great. It takes place in 2019. It is the far future when the movie was made in 1982. Now we are looking at a mere 11 years hence.
Scott’s vision of the future is already correct in some ways. For example, it is always dark, gloomy and rainy in 2019. Global warming does cause weather problems.
But when Harrison Ford, playing Rick Deckard, needs to make a phone call, it isn’t on a teensy, tiny cell phone. No, it’s in a phone booth. A phone booth? Who sees phone booths in 2008, let alone 2019?
This is an OK film plotwise. It’s the whole set, it’s the scenery that makes this picture work in this apocalyptic tale.
Ford plays Deckard, a blade runner who must track down and terminate (or retire) six replicants who hijacked a space ship. Replicants are like almost-human robots who are even implanted with childhood memories. They were designed for labor in far-off colonies. They aren’t supposed to be on Earth.
Ah, but these six are return to Earth to meet their maker, literally.
Ford, as a blade runner, must track down these errant replicants.
Replicants on average live only four years. These replicants end up in Los Angeles, looking for ways to extend their lives.
The Ford character hunts down these creatures, but in the meantime he learns from these replicants.
The replicants appear to be the victims in this epic saga.
There’s plenty of graphic violence. What the replicants do to their creator is, well, anything but nice. Beware.
If you are a science fiction buff, you’ll want to get a version with the fancy case, available in Blu Ray, HD or standard DVD. You have at least one of those, don’t you?
You’ll get the theatrical cut, the version Scott wanted to do at first but the studio wouldn’t allow, deleted scenes, audio commentary, interviews and a few documentaries.
By the time you get done with all of this, it will actually be 2019.
You’ll have all of those memories of watching this film and its extras. Are they real memories? Were they just planted in your brain?
Something to think about.
Blade Runner
• Rated R for violence and brief nudity, which is cut from some versions
• 117 minutes
• 3 stars out of 4
This appeared in Weekender Feb. 1, 2008 in the Ashtabula Star Beacon.