Viking Night
Blade Runner
By Bruce Hall
July 26, 2011
BoxOfficeProphets.com
That world is in a dystopian Los Angeles, not quite ten years from the time of this writing. It would appear that the world economy has hit a speed bump. Material resources have become difficult to come by and the earth is a grimy, overpopulated mess. The world’s cities and the people who live in them have a bleak, retro-futuristic look to them as if they’ve been slapped together from whatever was lying around at the time. Right away, Blade Runner makes the future look full of promise and possibility, all achieved at a great and terrible cost. And part of that cost involves the hazards of space exploration. Mining asteroids for the raw materials humanity needs is tough work, and human life is too valuable to risk. The powerful corporations behind the world’s economy use machines for this dirty work; humanoid creatures called Replicants. These beings are essentially androids, totally indistinguishable from the humans who created them.
Now, I hate it when I call my credit card company and I have to talk to one of those stupid robots that wants to interact with you by trying to sound human. The more they try, the creepier they are, and this is probably why Replicants are made to be so lifelike. In fact, the company at the forefront of Replicant technology is the Tyrell Corporation, whose motto is “More Human than Human”. It makes for good business, but humans have a tendency to crave freedom and the machines they’ve created to serve them are no different. For this reason, Replicants are given a four year life span and are forbidden to live on Earth. It would be too easy for them to blend in and disappear, robbing their owners of a considerable investment. But much like their human masters, Replicants don’t always obey the law. That’s why there are Blade Runners.
Blade Runners are a special kind of cop, trained to hunt down and “retire” Replicants who dare return to their homeworld. Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford) is such a man, and he is our hero. But when we meet him, he looks significantly less than heroic. Deckard is a guy who seems like he wants to crawl under the bed with a bottle of scotch and never come out again. We find out why when he’s cornered at a sushi stand by a colleague (Edward James Olmos) - summoning him to headquarters to meet with their boss, Captain Bryant (Emmett Walsh). Deckard happens to have a knack for sniffing Replicants out, and right now four of these "skin jobs" have gone AWOL and returned to Earth. They’re walking the streets of Los Angeles, leaving a trail of death and destruction in their wake. There’s never been an incursion like this and although he’s tried to retire from the Force, Deckard is more or less drafted back into service.
He discovers that the fugitives have attempted to infiltrate the Tyrell Corporation. Nobody is sure what they want, or why they would risk going back to the very facility where they were manufactured. But it is possible to discover a Replicant by running a comprehensive psychological test called Voight-Kampf. Despite their appearance, Replicants are still machines, without the benefit of experience and memory. So when you ask them questions about their past, they usually trip themselves up. The Blade Runner Deckard was called in to replace did just that, and paid dearly for it. It’s now Deckard’s job to pick up the trail - and that trail leads him straight to Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), the mastermind behind the company.
Deckard is sent to Tyrell to try Voight-Kampf on a prototype model, a Replicant called Rachel (Sean Young). Rachel has been implanted with false memories, meaning she does not know she’s a machine – and this sets up the film’s central premise: If humans can create other humans out of thin air, what does it even mean to be human? When our memories can be digitally scrapbooked and reproduced at will, what happens to our individuality? What use is God when technology has rendered life and death almost meaningless? Blade Runner wisely declines to answer these questions directly. Instead, it examines what happens when ordinary humans – and extraordinary Replicants – attempt to grapple with them.
The Replicants have become curious about their nature, making them hard to control; ironically making them More Human Than Human™ in fact and not just in name. Tyrell explains that implanting them with memories helps them feel like real people, making them easier to manipulate. But the obvious question is once you’ve made a Replicant believe it is human, is it then entitled to human rights? Humans forced to work against their will are called slaves, and once they begin to realize this, the Replicants revolt. The leader of the fugitives is Roy Batty, a combat model built to lead with charisma, and to kill without pity. Roy Batty is determined to find a way to circumvent his four year lifespan and earn freedom for his brethren. At the same time, Rachel discovers her true nature and goes into hiding, unwittingly putting herself on Deckard’s retirement list. It’s a sticky wicket, and it’s hard not to feel sorry for them.
And this is precisely why Deckard pursues his assignment so reluctantly; he feels pangs of sympathy for the very beings he’s spent his whole career hunting down. As he begins to encounter the insurgents, he’s forced by their desperate actions to see them as human even as he kills them off - even as he begins to develop feelings for Rachel. It isn’t long before Deckard begins to question his work, his world and even his OWN humanity. And when he finally comes face to face with Roy Batty, their confrontation is as philosophical as it is physical. Sadly, this brings me to what I feel is the biggest flaw in the entire film. Most will disagree, and many will excoriate me for it, but I stand by what I’m about to say and having seen Blade Runner dozens of times, I’m pretty comfortable with my opinion.
The looming expiration of his four year lifespan life cycle makes Roy Batty’s quest desperately urgent and stunningly poignant, and Rutger Hauer’s intricate portrayal adds great emotional weight to the story. Meanwhile, Harrison Ford’s performance is a source of great angst to me. Ford’s approach to acting tends to reduce each character to one or two basic emotional states, and he rarely deviates from this for the course of the film. Han Solo is a “lovable maverick”. Indiana Jones is a “lovable intellectual maverick”. Allie Fox (The Mosquito Coast) is an “idealistic intellectual maverick”. John Book (Witness) is a “sensitive idealistic maverick”. Jack Ryan is a “naïve, idealistic intellectual maverick”. You get the point. I see Ford as kind of just being himself in most of the roles he plays, and adjusting the degree to which he does it depending on the requirements of the script. He’s a tremendously engaging actor thanks to his charisma, but in my opinion he lacks nuance.
As a result, in the climactic scene near the end of Blade Runner, you have Rutger Hauer giving one of the best performances of his life. He IS Roy Batty - a flawed, noble revolutionary who is struggling with the fact that he may have failed at the most important thing he ever tried to do. It’s touching. It’s tragic. It’s terrific. And opposite him you have Harrison Ford, being....Harrison Ford, doing that “beleaguered everyman” thing he does with almost every role. It’s not bad, it doesn’t ruin the film and it ultimately does work just fine. I consider myself a fan of Harrison Ford and I am in no way claiming he is not deserving of his success. But each time I watch Blade Runner, I can’t help but wonder how a great film might have been even greater were someone with more range cast as Deckard. It’s just a thought.
But once a film becomes legend it’s impossible to imagine it any other way than the way it is. Blade Runner’s biggest single flaw is a painful expository scene early in the film. Bryant provides Deckard with a ton of back story on Replicants that seems completely unnecessary, since we’ve literally just been told that Deckard is the best Replicant hunter in the world. But legendary films have legendary flaws, and just as we do with people we love we tend to excuse gaping flaws in the films that we love. When something moves you, touches you, shows you beauty that you weren’t expecting and instills you with faith you never knew you had, you can forgive it almost anything. To err is human, to forgive is divine, and to experience both at the same time...well, it kind of makes you MORE human than human. I encourage you to experience Ridley Scott’s masterpiece, and to decide for yourself. It’s one of the greatest movies ever made – and if you let it be, it’s one of the most profound and moving experiences you’ll ever have watching one.