Blade Runner

Scott Hardie: “It ruled.”

A quarter-century after its initial failure at the box office, Blade Runner has joined a pantheon of widely-respected but dramatically ice-cold sci-fi classics like Metropolis and 2001: A Space Odyssey. There's so little warmth here, and not just in the refrigerated laboratory scene. Now appreciated as a cerebral cult classic, with the help of a much-improved director's cut, it plays best if you ponder its comments about the wastefulness of human invention and our self-perception as the gods of our world; less so if you're looking for a simple, fun action-adventure. A landmark of cyberpunk fiction, it introduced themes that other filmmakers still haven't resolved all these years later, even if they have found ways to make them more entertaining.

− April 14, 2008 • more by Scott • log in or register to reply