Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Not to be confused with the mislabeled director’s cut that’s been around for 15 years, this seventh edition of Ridley Scott’s SF masterpiece (1982) is arguably the first to get it all right, finally telling the whole story comprehensibly. This visionary look at Los Angeles in 2019a singular blend of grime and glitter that captures both the horror and the allure of Reagan-era capitalismwas a commercial flop when it first appeared. Loosely adapted from Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, it follows the hero (Harrison Ford) as he tracks down and kills replicants, or androids. Much of the film’s erotic charge and moral and ideological ambiguity stem from the fact that these characters are very nearly the only ones we care about. (We never know for sure whether Ford is a replicant himself.) With Sean Young, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos, Joe Turkel, and William J. Sanderson. R, 117 min. (JR)

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