Subject: REVIEW: BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT

From: [email-masked] (Frank R.A.J. Maloney)
Date: 18 Sep 92 13:19:47 GMT

[Followups directed to rec.arts.sf.movies. -Moderator]

		      BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT
		       A film review by Frank Maloney
			Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney

     BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is a film directed by Ridley Scott
from a script by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples.  It stars Harrison
Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, with Edward James Olmos, James Turkel,
Darryl Hannah, Brion James, Joanna Cassidy, and M. Emmet Walsh.
Production designer is Lawrence G.  Paull, art director David Snyder,
consultant Sid Mead, and special-effects by Donald Trumbrull.
Cinematography is by Jordan Cronenweth.  Music by Vangelis.  Based on
the novel DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP by Philip K. Dick.  Rated
R, for violence.

     BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT is Ridley Scott's 1992 version of
what the 1982 film would have looked like if it had survived its preview
screenings and a nervous studio.  Gone is the Raymond-Chandler-style
voice-over to explain it all to us.  Gone is the sappy ending.  Added is
a key dream sequence (that presaged, as it turns out, Scott's 1986
fantasy LEGEND), the rest of the Vangelis score, and some additional
footage to several key scenes.  The director's cut makes this great cult
film only greater, more impressive, more stimulating, more interesting.

     It is probably pointless to try to review BLADE RUNNER as one would
a new film, even though there a lot of people who have never seen even
the original theatrical release.  (It was, lest we forget, a huge box
office bomb in 1982, being completely swallowed up by the audience rush
to E.T., which had opened in the same month.)  Mostly, I am here now to
tell you that this is one of the greatest sf films ever made.  And that
if you are near one of the 60-some U.S. cities that opened BLADE RUNNER
this last Friday September 11, you simply must go see it.  Not only is
the film wonderful (for reasons I will touch on in a minute), but it is
an energizing experience merely to be in the same block as a venue like
Seattle's Egyptian Theater and to experience the huge crowds outside, a
line endlessly snaking around the building and down the alley to the
next street, another crowd of people who have just gotten out of the
last showing and who obviously don't want to leave, who want to stand on
the sidewalk and talk about what they have just seen.  And inside to
feel the excited hubbub of the audience waiting, waiting, to hear them
applaud the dimming of the house lights, to hear them applaud loudly the
final credits.  This is what movie-going is supposed to be about:
excitement, stimulation, satisfaction.  I haven't felt quite the same
rush of group anticipation since the original STAR WARS opened.  By
comparison, opening night audiences for BATMAN were bored and
noncommittal.

     As for what makes BLADE RUNNER great, allow me to sketch out of few
beginning points, without pretending to exhaust the subject.  For one
thing, this movie has a great theme, the greatest human theme: life,
death, and their meaning.  What does it mean to live, to die?  Rutger
Hauer's speech in the rain on what he has seen, on the memories that
will die with him, is deeply moving, coming especially as it does from
the ostensible villain of the piece.  And that's another source of BLADE
RUNNER's greatness, its ambiguity, its willingness not to explain.  It
shows and lets the audience put it together, on the fly, as it were;
this quality was not seen in 1982 as a strength by those preview
audiences who were reportedly confused by the story.  It's hard for me
to imagine that being a problem today; certainly, my partner Lyndol, who
literally knew nothing about BLADE RUNNER except that was an sf film I
wanted to go to, followed it perfectly and without the film noir
narration that had Harrison Ford say such inanities as "What the hell
was happening to me?"  Putting it another way, BLADE RUNNER is an sf
film that treats its audience as adults, intelligent adults.

     Another source of greatness is the look of the film.  Seldom will
one be exposed to such a detailed, imaginative, and intriguing design.
The now famous Scott look is still fresh and effective here: the wet
black streets, the steam, the chiaroscuro, the sourceless beams of
light, the random craziness in the background and edges of the main
action.  The eye and mind are condemned to miss so much even while
picking up so many delightful minutiae.  They make the world of 2019
L.A., with its flying billboards, its 700-storey arcologies, its
medieval street life, open markets and open sewers, the grungy soba
bars, the dwarf scavengers, the open bonfires complete and whole and
real.  Everything about the design is rich and satisfying.  For those
who know the film, I have only to point to the chase scene that ends
with crashes through multiple windows to find an example of the visual
imagination that so mightily informs BLADE RUNNER.

     A third area of achievement that sets BLADE RUNNER off from almost
all other sf films is its commitment to examing relationships, to allow
long sequences of characters establishing their characters, establishing
their relationships.  These sequences are not flaccid, they do not
deflate the tension of the prolonged chase that is most of BLADE RUNNER.
They are themselves basic to the theme and story, basic to the adultness
of the film.

     Of course, there are some flaws.  Most especially, I object to
Sebastian's toys.  They are too cute, as well as too obviously Little
People in fancy dress.  Cuteness is out of place in this world.  Even
the nerdy whimsy of a Sebastian, the genetic designer, should not have
been reduced to a reply to the R2D2 kind of sweetness.

     Go to BLADE RUNNER--THE DIRECTOR'S CUT.  Pay what you must, you
will get your money's worth.

-- 
Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney