James Absolon explains how this Pope-themed film, despite its risky premise, works
Alex Pollard reviews Hollywood's biopic of the controversial Margaret Thatcher
It is 2019 in Los Angeles and Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a Blade Runner. That is, a police officer employed to kill artificially created humans known as Replicants. Why? Because they have escaped from off-world slave labour camps to find out the secrets of their creation and extend their life, which is limited to four years as a safety mechanism.
You may be forgiven for thinking that this is the product of an ambitious Star Wars fanatic, with the typecasting of Harrison Ford brooding in some sort of space craft. This is without even mentioning an almost parallel opening scene which sees the science fiction text floating off in the sky to introduce the film. But these conceptions should be dismissed very quickly.
Blade Runner is fused with the romance and gloom of 1940s noir pulps, with Deckard prowling plenty of smoky streets in a city which seems eternally dark and rainy. It is when Deckard falls in love with the experimental Replicant, Rachael (Sean Young), that he - and we - question ideas of identity, humanity and existence. Designed to be "more human than human", Rachael is unaware that she is a Replicant, and is built with emotions and fake memories of childhood.
Moral complexities saturate this film’s meaning, and even more so today than when it was first released in 1982. The recently aired Channel 4 documentary, My Fake Baby, is a reminder of the disturbing proximity of our society to that depicted in Blade Runner.
As an adaptation from Philip K Dick’s novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ridley Scott really must be commended for creating such stunningly memorable visuals like the bleak Los Angeles skyline, full of towers spewing out vast balls of ignited oil. The soundtrack of simple synthesizers suits the visuals perfectly, creating a brilliantly futuristic and urban atmosphere. It is a truly thought-provoking view of future human existence.
I've recently got myself the Final Cut on dvd, can't wait to watch it!
For someone who has never seen it before and will (probably) only want to watch one version, which one should they go for?
A really bad film, in my opinion. I sat down to watch it with high hopes and was bored to death...apparently the book is better?
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