38.
Blade Runner (1982) -
Ridley ScottIn a cyberpunk vision of the future, man has developed the technology to create replicants, human clones used to serve in the colonies outside Earth but with fixed lifespans. In Los Angeles, 2019, Deckard is a Blade Runner, a cop who specialises in terminating replicants. Blade Runner takes place in a futuristic Los Angeles in 2019, where the world is quite different from the one we currently live in. It rains constantly, smoke is everywhere, the world is darker and cold. Imagine a film noir, but set in the future within the confines of the science fiction genre. Los Angeles is threatened by four replicants (human like androids) in search of their human creator. Blade Runners are a special group of detectives who's job it is to terminate replicants who are not controlled. Harrison Ford is Deckard, a Blade Runner out of retirement for "one last job" who falls in love with a replicant. Blade Runner asks us to question "what it is to be human?". The replicant androids have all the human characteristics of hope, love and desire. They are programmed with a fake childhood, all their memories artificially made and created. Frequent shots of eyes and manipulated images make us question the whole notion of perception and our ability to form our own identity. Ridley Scott brings a breathtaking atmosphere of a grim futuristic world and a one that is full of detail and mise en scene. I've seen this film a number of times and I'm blown away by the visuals on each viewing, it's impossible to take everything in on the first or second watch. Harrison Ford was a God among men in the 1980's, and in Blade Runner he is the perfect actor to play a down and out detective. However, he is totally out done by the awesome performance of Rutger Hauer, who is the leader and the most dangerous of the four replicants. He is creepy as hell in Blade Runner, I'm still scared of his evil bad guy that he plays which such strange innocence. Blade Runner is one of the best of the science fiction genre but just make sure you watch it on pristine DVD, otherwise you won't be doing the visuals any justice.