It is difficult to be ambivalent about Blade Runner: You either like it or dislike it intensely--or both. Critics, for the most part, disliked Harrison Ford's low-key performance in the leading role, hated the graphic violence and found the story uninspiring. Some dared to admit they liked the film, and even called it the best science-fiction film of the 1980s. All were unanimous in their praise of the visual effects.

Similarly, audiences were either overwhelmed by the oppressive settings and violence or exhilarated by director Ridley Scott's vivid vision of the future which, according to one reviewer, "sticks with you like a recurrent nightmare." Viewers expecting Indiana Jones or Han Solo were also put off by Ford's laconic portrayal of the film noir detective. But everyone felt the impact of Scott's milieu.

On first viewing, the film can be overwhelming: characters compete with the environment for your attention, the past of 40 years ago clashes with the future 40 years hence, and expectations are repeatedly shattered as the status of characters constantly changes. The viewer is thrust abruptly into a future in which humans and androids (replicants) coexist uneasily, and errant androids are hunted and "retired" by Blade Runners like Deckard (Harrison Ford). Deckard's love for the replicant Rachael (Sean Young) -- whom he has orders to kill -- unfolds within this intensely drawn setting.

You experience vertigo as a spinner car spirals down onto the roof of police headquarters, the minute lights of traffic moving in the streets 700 stories below. You see the city in infinitely rich detail as Deckard experiences it: the endless city lights extending beyond the pyramids, congested elevated highways in the distance, the constant background of air traffic controller instructions, and the car video screens misaligned from constant abuse. You hold your breath high above the street and hang with Deckard by wet, slipping fingers until your strength is drained.

Streets swarm with a bizarre mass of humanity and trash that accumulates faster than it can be removed. Strange faces, incomprehensible signs, and queer sounds help create a mixture of the foreign and the familiar. You feel alive in a future you can actually touch and feel -- a frightening and exciting place filled with beauty, wonder, decay and violence.

Critics singled out Blade Runner's unrealistic Hollywood ending, which does not make artistic or logical sense, as a major flaw. The first cut concluded with Deckard and Rachael entering the elevator and doors closing. The producers, in response to preview audiences in Denver and Dallas who found this European-style ending too bleak and ambiguous, added footage (reportedly from The Shining) and extended Rachael's lifespan, which is inconsistent with the entire mood of the movie and the tragedy in Deckard and Rachael's situation. Some critics think this was done because the film was so uniquely depressing in a period of otherwise upbeat movies such as ET, Tron, and Star Trek II.

In an earlier version of the script, Rachael has Deckard take her to an isolated snow-covered spot in the country she saw in one of his pictures. To Rachael, the great advantage of being alive was to have a choice; she chose the only way she could avoid capture. Deckard unwillingly retires her, rationalizing that if he didn't someone else would. For Deckard, replicant and human had become inseparable -- the difference was beyond understanding; for a short time they had made each other human. In the shooting version of the script, Rachael and Deckard escape in his spinner. From previous clues such as a dream sequence in which Deckard sees a unicorn, a glow in his eyes similar to that of the replicants and the final rooftop exchange with Gaff, Deckard realizes that he, the replicant Batty and Rachael are the new people, made for this world. He sees a tiny blip on his spinner display screen -- Gaff in hot pursuit -- and his closing line is, "God help us all!" This ending, which implies that Deckard is in fact a replicant him self, calls into question the film's explicit premises. But however we interpret the movie, it is both intelligent and thought provoking. It shows the tragedy of becoming inhuman by fighting inhumanity. It forces us to ask what happens if we cannot trust our memories; we rely on memory completely because memory tells us this has always worked in the past. But what if that memory is false? The consequences could well drive a human mad or make a replicant human.

Blade Runner won the Hugo Award for best science fiction film of 1982 and received the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Film Awards for best cinematography and best production design/art direction. It also won the British Critics' Circle special technical award.

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