If it's crap... We'll tell you
Heyra666 Presents: Movie Review - Blade Runner: The Final Cut
Hey everybody, this is the first in looooong series of movie reviews of whatever I order off of Netflix. As a warning, every one of these reviews will by nature have massive spoilers.
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
You know, as I said earlier, these are mostly reviews of movies that I get off of Netflix. Now you might say, "Well, if you choose what you order, you would choose good movies, right?" Well yes. Yes I would. But sometimes I get surprised by a movie that is so awful that it makes me hate Harrison Ford. Yes, Harrison Ford, the actor behind Indiana Jones and Han Solo is in this movie. So why isn't it good? Well for one thing, he doesn't bother to, y'know, act. That's kinda important when you're in a GODDAMN MOVIE!
I'll take a step back here and explain: Blade Runner is regarded as a cult classic Science Fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott. The movie takes place in the future, when, after a revolution by the replicants, androids meant to replicate humans almost perfectly, the androids are outlawed and hunted by "Blade Runners," who, oddly enough, do NOT use blades, but in fact use guns. No, I don't know why. Anyhow, after four replicants land on Earth for an unknown reason, the Blade Runner Rick Deckard, played by Ford, is brought out of retirement for an unspecified reason to find and kill the four.
Now, let me get this out of the way. the visuals in Blade Runner are awesome . The sweeping city and grand structures feel organic and grounded in reality. There is no CGI that I know of, and the analog effects are crisp, well done, and fascinating.
However, the movie crashes and burns when it comes to pretty much everything else. Harrison Ford conveys no emotion whatsoever, and although its hinted that he may be a replicant, the movie never makes it clear, which nullifies the potential payoff. We're introduced to a replicant who doesn't know that she's a replicant and saves Ford's life for some random reason. They then have sex. DUDE, SHE IS A ROBOT! And this is just the first of many WTF moments. Here's a short list.
- Deckard's partner makes symbolic origami that he leaves lying around. Why? Because he needs a hobby? Your guess is as good as mine. But that's not the weird part.
- The bad guy saves Deckard's life after trying repeatedly to kill him, with no reason for his change of heart. But that's not the weird part.
- As the bad guy dies, a dove flies from his arm to the sky. We don't see the dove land on his arm. We have never seen the dove before. But even that is not the craziest part of Bade Runner.
- Here it is: during a scene where Ford tracks down a female replicant who is working as a stripper, he affects a completely different personality to try to fool the stripper. He has a gun. He could have shot her AT ANY POINT, since it was totally legal, but, in his glorious wisdom, decided not to shoot the damn robot and instead pretend to be a worker from an association for ethical treatment of women. I wish I was kidding.
And then we have the movie's worst crime of all. It drags. Oh dear God it drags. The actors, if you can call them that, spend five hours staring before they move an inch. The music is perpetually slow and depressing, which admittedly helps set the tone, but it also prevents any of the "nail-biting" action sequences from being engaging.
And it doesn't help that the movie has less engaging dialogue than a convention for mute people.
Everybody loves this movie. Why? Because it has "vision." However, vision does not save this from descending past the "Some 'ol Bullsh*t" category and straight into F*ck You zone.
Rating: F*ck You
(By the way, I'm not just this to be a troll. I entered this with high expectations, and so did both people I saw it with. After about an hour, I was ready to stop the movie. And I was watching it in my own damn living room!)
Blade Runner: The Final Cut
You know, as I said earlier, these are mostly reviews of movies that I get off of Netflix. Now you might say, "Well, if you choose what you order, you would choose good movies, right?" Well yes. Yes I would. But sometimes I get surprised by a movie that is so awful that it makes me hate Harrison Ford. Yes, Harrison Ford, the actor behind Indiana Jones and Han Solo is in this movie. So why isn't it good? Well for one thing, he doesn't bother to, y'know, act. That's kinda important when you're in a GODDAMN MOVIE!
I'll take a step back here and explain: Blade Runner is regarded as a cult classic Science Fiction film, directed by Ridley Scott. The movie takes place in the future, when, after a revolution by the replicants, androids meant to replicate humans almost perfectly, the androids are outlawed and hunted by "Blade Runners," who, oddly enough, do NOT use blades, but in fact use guns. No, I don't know why. Anyhow, after four replicants land on Earth for an unknown reason, the Blade Runner Rick Deckard, played by Ford, is brought out of retirement for an unspecified reason to find and kill the four.
Now, let me get this out of the way. the visuals in Blade Runner are awesome . The sweeping city and grand structures feel organic and grounded in reality. There is no CGI that I know of, and the analog effects are crisp, well done, and fascinating.
However, the movie crashes and burns when it comes to pretty much everything else. Harrison Ford conveys no emotion whatsoever, and although its hinted that he may be a replicant, the movie never makes it clear, which nullifies the potential payoff. We're introduced to a replicant who doesn't know that she's a replicant and saves Ford's life for some random reason. They then have sex. DUDE, SHE IS A ROBOT! And this is just the first of many WTF moments. Here's a short list.
- Deckard's partner makes symbolic origami that he leaves lying around. Why? Because he needs a hobby? Your guess is as good as mine. But that's not the weird part.
- The bad guy saves Deckard's life after trying repeatedly to kill him, with no reason for his change of heart. But that's not the weird part.
- As the bad guy dies, a dove flies from his arm to the sky. We don't see the dove land on his arm. We have never seen the dove before. But even that is not the craziest part of Bade Runner.
- Here it is: during a scene where Ford tracks down a female replicant who is working as a stripper, he affects a completely different personality to try to fool the stripper. He has a gun. He could have shot her AT ANY POINT, since it was totally legal, but, in his glorious wisdom, decided not to shoot the damn robot and instead pretend to be a worker from an association for ethical treatment of women. I wish I was kidding.
And then we have the movie's worst crime of all. It drags. Oh dear God it drags. The actors, if you can call them that, spend five hours staring before they move an inch. The music is perpetually slow and depressing, which admittedly helps set the tone, but it also prevents any of the "nail-biting" action sequences from being engaging.
And it doesn't help that the movie has less engaging dialogue than a convention for mute people.
Everybody loves this movie. Why? Because it has "vision." However, vision does not save this from descending past the "Some 'ol Bullsh*t" category and straight into F*ck You zone.
Rating: F*ck You
(By the way, I'm not just this to be a troll. I entered this with high expectations, and so did both people I saw it with. After about an hour, I was ready to stop the movie. And I was watching it in my own damn living room!)
Tags: blade, cut, f*ck, final, ford, harrison, heyra666, movie, review, ridley
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by MDS on -
Go back and re-watch the movie again....
Decker is brought out of retirement because he is the BEST at tracking down replicants, and they wanted the BEST on the case regardless of being active or not because of the fact they were going after the head of the company.
"DUDE, SHE IS A ROBOT! And this is just the first of many WTF moments."
She's not aware that she truly IS an android, due to the false memories in her head. As far as she knows she's just as human as the next person. PLUS, if you go back and watch the beginning again, it clearly states that Pris was an 'Entertainment' model, so it's not like having sex with replicants was unheard of.
"Deckard's partner makes symbolic origami that he leaves lying around. "
As a calling card, to pass time, and if you notice almost every thing he makes is a symbol for something else. The dove for freedom, for example.
"The bad guy saves Deckard's life after trying repeatedly to kill him, with no reason for his change of heart. "
Because Roy's whole purpose to coming to Earth again was to seek LIFE.... what more could a replicant do to show he's OPTING to LIVE than to save the life of the person that's trying to kill him?
The dove? That's just bad editing, or at least nit-picking.
"He could have shot her AT ANY POINT"
Not quite, he's trying to get MORE information out of her about the location of the other replicants. Does Decker NO GOOD, to show up, put a bullet through her head and THEN go, "Oh, where's your friends at?" It's called, GUILE and deception.
And hey, Blade Runner is NOT for everyone, I'll be the first to say that. I also think that Scott completely fucked over the WHOLE movie by claiming Decker is a Replicant 20+ years later, when the whole time the underlying concepts were "We are pulling for a sanctioned assassin to win" and the point of "What is life, and why do we (Meaning humans) feel the need to manipulate it?"
Vision? Well, it DOES have a very good visionary look to the movie, but the moral and ethical problems are the main storyline. Example, is that J.F. Sebastian is going to die young due to his genetic flaws, yet he's willing to find a way to extend the life of the Replicants because he views it as extending his creation. The old man who runs the company (Tyrell) is on the verge of death due to old age, but is so determined to make the 'perfect' creation that he removes the ONE restriction on the Replicants have built in to extent his creation of Rachel.
It's all about "Life" and who deserves it, and who doesn't.
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Permalink Reply by Heyra667 on -
Well, I was watching Scott's cut of the movie, so that may have been an issue.
I guess any given person's enjoyment of this film is reliant on their willingness to look passed all the random (or not so random) symmbolism, the bad acting, the poor pacing, the dragging scenes where people just stare for twenty minutes (hyperbole), and their willingness to appreciate the movie for the messages and themes that it was trying to convey.
I could easily forgive the nitpicks (there are always some in every movie) if Deckard had any sort of personality, or if the movie moved faster than a geriatric quadruple-amputee (Wow, that comparison was a little harsh)
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Permalink Reply by MDS on
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Yeah, Scott's cut...... not sure how I feel about that one. I don't think it's the 'best' version of the movie, but it really does have it's flaws. Some of which were made MORE noticeable by that cut. lol
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Permalink Reply by BladeRunner007 on -
Why the hell did you give Blade Runner a F**K YOU? Blade Runenr is a great movie. I haven't seen The Final Cut yet, but its not deserving of that rating.
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Permalink Reply by Heyra667 on
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I've got a couple things to say in response.
#1: Judging by your name, I'm thinking you might be a teensy bit biased.
#2: My reviews are usually written very soon (A day or two) after I see the movie, and basically convey my initial response and then second thoughts. As I said in the comments above, I wanted to walk out on a movie in my own living room. Any intriguing parts of the movie that might have got me thinking afterwards were overruled by the simple fact that I will never want to see this movie ever again. This is not an exaggeration.
#3: One of the things I find important in any movie I watch, is that I was entertained or engaged, either mentally, emotionally, or whatever else their is. While Blade Runner has excellent ideas behind it, an interesting setting, and great philosophical and psychological themes, it is not entertaining for me in the least. In my book, that means that it failed as a movie.
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Permalink Reply by keyser soze on -
fact is some movies age better than others. I too found it to be very slow. I suspect most who say "what? blade runner is the $hit..saw it before when it first came out therefore having sentimental value.. Kinda like watching the old cartoons of the 80s. That being said, I dare say anybody seeing for the first time today wont be so impressed and will wonder what the big deal was
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Permalink Reply by Heyra667 on
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Maybe they should have given it a name that had something to do with the short story it was based on, instead of a completely unrelated one. And if they were trying to get you to see Roy as the protagonist, they really shouldn't have had him brutally murder someone by gouging out their eyes. That doesn't exactly make me feel sympathetic towards him.
I've never seen Lost Boys, but if it's more pretentious than Blade Runner, I think I'd need a lobotomy before I could sit through it.
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Permalink Reply by The Eyeball Kid on
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That doesn't exactly make me feel sympathetic towards him.
Like the fella says: You like people for their virtues, but you love them for their flaws.
Baty was lashing out at a society that screwed him over with his very existence. I don't think anyone would make the case that he's a nice guy, but I still found myself sympathizing greatly with him (infinitely more than any of the other characters).
The thing that separates him from Deckhart is his humanity (deep, no?).
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Permalink Reply by Heyra667 on
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I get that, and if he hadn't popped somebody's eyeballs with his thumbs I think I may have been a little more inclined to love him. Murderous psychopaths do not make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
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I confess that I've never been able to get through the movie without nodding off at least a little bit. My last attempt did little to impress me.
Harrison Ford is usually a terrible actor. Yes, he was perfect as Indiana Jones (well, he was perfect twice anyway), but this ranks among his worst performances. Every time he, or any other human character was on screen, I had to fight to keep interest. I heard that Ford admitted to phoning it in (he was desperately trying to dissociate himself from sci-fi), but given how bland the character was to begin with, I can't really hold it against him in this case.
It certainly has its saving graces, though. Rutger Hauer easily made up for Ford in the acting department. I found most of the replicants more sympathetic than the human characters. This was probably Scott's intention, but it meant that the movie would only be interesting for roughly 1/3 of its running time. There's a scene in which Hauer tracks down the man who built him and demands that he fix his mortality. The situation was so pure in its simplicity that I couldn't help being moved by it. Then there's that final moment of empathy between Hauer and Ford. It nearly justifies the rest of the film.
Is it pretty? I suppose, but its design does nothing that hasn't been done better before or since. The Spirit was just as pretty, but that doesn't make it a good movie. The editing was downright disorienting in some scenes. We go from a bird's eye view of a darkened city to an extreme close-up on the eye of the pilot, its warm tones completely out of balance with the rest of the scene. I couldn't help but make confused faces in return.
We were shown this cut in a college course on Science Fiction & Fantasy. Hatred for it was nearly unanimous, but I at least thought it had its strengths. Ultimately, though, it offers nothing that can't be found better executed in Ridley Scott's true masterpiece, Alien.
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