Rutger Hauer Movie Reviews

In retrospect, 'Blade Runner' was one of the most famous movies of the eighties. Back in 1982, it failed at the box-office and dwindled for many years only to emerge anew when the Director's Cut was released in 1992, adding even more to it's home video success. Yes, 'Blade Runner' is a cult classic nowadays and considered by many to be one of the best SF movies ever made.

The movie is set in Los Angeles in the year 2019. The city is overcrowded and cold, the rain is pouring down, chilling humans to the bone in every possible way. Life is so rare and precious that animals are almost extinct, calling for the need of artificial ones instead. Commercials flood the minds of the inhabitants, and the blend of old and new styles in fashion and design can be seen on people, cars and houses. The only way out of this dull world is to move to the 'Off-World Colonies', a place out of this world, so to speak, but one has to pass a physical fitness test and be quite rich in order to go.

Left here on Earth are, amongst other poor souls, the Blade Runners, a specialized force within the police with the mission to detect and "retire" replicants. One of them, Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), is an ex-Blade Runner who is reluctantly called back into duty by his former boss, Captain Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh). Deckard is then commanded to take care of what Bryant calls "a bad skin job situation," since another Blade Runner officer recently has been shot and hospitalized by an exposed replicant. Bryant tells Deckard that a number of fierce replicants, who are genetically designed humans with superior strength but have a limited life-span, have escaped an Off-World Colony and are here on earth to meet their maker for some drastic alterations in their beings: more life!

Meeting with Chief Genetics Designer Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), Deckard tests one of Tyrell's secretaries only to find out that she is a replicant without her knowledge of that fact. Tyrell beams at this revelation since his corporation's motto is "More Human Than Human Itself," and he prides himself of having, at last, created the ultimate replicant. Following up on some leads found in a hotel room, Deckard starts to hunt down the renegade replicants and their leader, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), through the mazes of the rainy and gloomy streets and buildings of Los Angeles, leaving a wake of confusion and sorrow behind him.

'Blade Runner' is a very visual movie, and it's "future noir" concept and design has been borrowed by many other filmmakers over the years. Director Ridley Scott ('Alien', 'Thelma & Louise') takes the viewer on a marvelous trip into the world of a future gone slightly mad and warped, aided on this "visual" quest by a handful of very good actors, especially Rutger Hauer and Harrison Ford. It's not really an action movie, but your senses are being attacked by all the sights and sounds of the movie. The pace is rather slow, but that gives the viewer a chance to marvel at all the visual stunts the creators have placed in every single frame of the movie. The design and sets (by Syd Mead, Lawrence G. Paull and David Snyder) have been mentioned above, but also the rich cinematography (by Jordan Cronenwenth) and the stunningly beautiful music by Vangelis contributes to the film's impressive "impressionistic" feeling.