Blade Runner

Ridley Scott’s loose adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?; the studio mucked about with this original version released in 1982, adding a noirish voice-over by hero Harrison Ford and actually purchasing outtakes from The Shining to illustrate the peculiar tacked-on finale. But this is still the most remarkably and densely imagined and visualized SF film since 2001: A Space Odyssey, a hauntingly erotic meditation on the difference between the human and the nonhuman. Set in a grungy LA of the 21st century characterized by nearly constant rain and a good many Chinese restaurantsyielding textures worthy of Welles or Sternbergthe plot involves a former cop (Ford) hired to track down and kill a series of androids. The results are largely a triumph of production design, but as in Forbidden Planet and 2001, it’s often hard to determine where production design leaves off and direction begins. With Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Edward James Olmos, Daryl Hannah, Joe Turkel, and Joanna Cassidy. 118 min. (JR)

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