This time, it is Ridley Scott's turn to offer us his prognostication of a future wherein corporate America has, ostensibly benignly, introduced the ultimate in labour saving devices - androids called "replicants" - which have a look and feel of people about them. These "Nexus" creations can turn their hands to just about anything, but when the latest off-world models rebel, all of their cousins become outlawed and it falls to the "Blade Runners" to track them down and destroy them. "Deckard" (Harrison Ford) is one such operator who is called back out of his retirement to identify four of these highly adaptable and intelligent robots and this perilous task takes him to the heart of their manufacturer run by the fiendishly clever but unscrupulous "Tyrell" (Joe Turkel), and into a web of duplicity surrounding their controlling protocols and maybe even a fifth, almost impossible to recognise "replicant", whom - unlike it's contemporaries - has no idea that it isn't human. Ford is on cracking form here, as is Rutger Hauer - the android leader "Batty" and the dark, frequently rainy imagery contributes wonderfully to this seedily presented story of greed and manipulation set amongst a grittily dank and hostile environment that offers little, visually anyway, by way of hope or relief. It has a film-noir look and feel to it, and Scott keeps it moving well, keeps the dialogue sparse - though impactful, and the whole thing develops cinematographically some of the pretty profound questions brought up in the original Philip Dick novel about just what constitutes humanity. Just shy of two hours - it flies by, especially on a big screen where the visuals and audio still work wonders.
