Hugely important and influential as it is, "Blade Runner" might be initially a hard nut to crack because on the surface it is a extremely slow-moving SF/action movie where atmosphere builds up gradually and it demands total concentration from a viewer accustomed to lighter fare. I completely forgot that I ever watched it before and was curious to check it out, since my recent obsession with "Alien" and its director Ridley Scott, but after two unsuccessful attempts to watch it, I decided to postpone it until the right moment arrives: fast forward sometime later, when I found myself in Shanghai and suddenly - because Shanghai looks and feels exactly like the inhuman, futuristic city in the movie, everything fell in a place. On the third attempt, I eventually finished the movie and was extremely moved with it, in fact now I think its one of the best things I have ever seen.
It is extremely dark and cruel story set in a dystopian futuristic world, where police officers ("blade runners") have to eliminate artificially created humanoid replicants who are on Earth illegally: because replicants are so perfect in their looks and behaviour, its almost impossible to distinguish them from humans and this can be proved only from certain high-tech tests. Moody and lonely detective Harrison Ford is assigned this unpleasant task, so he runs and shoots trough the crowded streets, lots of rain dripping everywhere and it seems like there is no sun anywhere in this world. It all gets fairly interesting action-wise until at certain point the suspicion starts to creep on you that all this replicant-killing business might be quite immoral (after all, why we created them in the first place and they have very short life span anyway) - replicants themselves appear dangerously powerful and threatening (specially when around unsuspecting humans, like sweet genetic designer Sebastian) but eventually towards the end we come to see it all from different perspective - they actually care for each other much more than humans in the movie do and their motives can be explained as a final cry for help from their cold designer (Joe Turkel). What really got me and it affected my whole attitude towards the movie is wonderful Rutger Hauer who is absolutely unforgettable and somehow he manages to turn his role completely inside out, metamorphosing from menacing robot into creature with soul and heart. It caught me completely by surprise how much I was moved by him and honestly, I couldn't care less for Ford or any other human characters in the movie - Hauer is the real reason why I will return to this movie.
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