Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner was released twenty-five years ago. It is based on a novel written forty-four years ago. The author on whose work the film is based is dead. So is the film’s cinematographer. Why, then, am I reviewing this movie? Further, why should you care?

The answer to the latter question is easy. You should care because Harrison Ford is immensely attractive.

In response to the former question, I decided to review this film because it was the only thing playing at Amherst Cinema when I remembered to do this because the opportunity to review the so-called Final Cut of this classic specimen of science fiction cinema was too much to pass up.

Blade Runner is based on one of my all-time favorite science fiction novels, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The movie is set in a dystopian Los Angeles in which organic analogues to humans, called replicants, are being genetically manufactured. The plot revolves around Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a blade runner- a bounty hunter charged with the task of “retiring,” not executing, stray “skin jobs,” as Gaff (Edward James Olmos) refers to them. The superhuman strength and decidedly human appearance of the replicants makes them especially dangerous to the haggard hangers-on left on the blighted earth.

The dead people I mentioned above are two of the best things about Blade Runner. Not that they are dead, but what they did while they were alive. Philip K. Dick was a truly revolutionary science fiction author responsible for the literature on which the films Minority Report, Total Recall, and A Scanner Darkly, among others, were based. He also wrote the absolutely awesome novel Galactic Pot Healer. Scott succeeds on multiple levels in his attempt to convey the intricacy, compulsion, and frightening relevance of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But then again, Dick’s vivid and skillful prose lends itself to a filmic interpretation of the text. The entire film exudes an air of literariness and premeditated philosophy. It manages to create a truly stunning, exciting story while wrestling with the same problems Dick addressed in the novel.

Jordan Cronenweth, the second dead person, is the late cinematographer responsible for the beautiful shots that pervade Blade Runner. His capability as an artist is apparent in his contemporary interpretations of the chiaroscuro, heavily contrasted black and white shots that are the trademark of film noir.

Rutger Hauer as the obviously exasperated replicant Roy Batty.

Sean Young as Rachael, the one robot in the world who smokes.

In fact, taken at face value, Blade Runner is not all that unique. At this point in posterity, it has become an unquestioned cultural icon and a standard for “cyberpunk” film. Total Recall is very similar: It is based on a Philip K. Dick story. It explores many of the issues present in Blade Runner. They both are set in the future. They both feature moody male protagonists. They both are replicants.

Just kidding. But they are really similar. The differences lie in that area of a film that oft goes taken for granted; that is, the cinematography. With masterful deftness, Cronenweth feels his way around the smoky, seedy overworld of the future. He extends his lens to every area of this city of squalor, and in doing so, affords us a vivid picture of the modern site of Noah’s flood, a town upon which hubris never ceases to rain its torrential downpour.

It certainly doesn’t hurt to have stunning performances from Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Daryl Hannah, Edward James Olmos, and William Sanderson, either. The audience gets to watch as Ford’s adolescent delinquency fades into tired faux-humanity against a backdrop of raindrops and cigarette smoke. Hannah plays a mind-bogglingly attractive femme fatale alongside Hauer’s robotic Aryan impeccability. Even though I thought William Sanderson was William H. Macy for half of the film, he was great in the movie too.

I can’t give Blade Runner anything less than an A-. Why would I? I forced myself to watch this film with as few critical biases as possible. That is obviously a pipe dream, however. We can never actually escape the words of others, especially in relation to a film and especially if the “other” in question is my dad when I was five years old. One always formulates an argument in response to another. Our opinions are reactions to the opinions of others: they either over-compensate in a contrary response to a review or agree vehemently with the accepted opinions of reputable critics.

This review, then, is neither. I am agreeing reluctantly with twenty-five years of critical acclaim. I hope by analyzing a few key technical elements of the film, I have convinced you of the legitimacy of my opinion regarding a work so colloquially revered as Blade Runner.

But even if I haven’t, I still win because you read my review and you’ll be forever influenced by what I’ve said.

Grade: A