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Blade Runner - The Director's Cut

Ridely Scott's (Alien, The Duellists) 1992 re-cut version of his then ten year old epic: Blade Runner - The Director's Cut gets restored and re-mastered from Warner Home Video as a shiny 'definitive' DVD.

"Blade Runner rewrote the rulebook and altered the way sci-fi movies looked forever...the stunning visualisation of a corroded near-future LA still steals the breath like no other." - ***** Empire.

"In its earlier incarnation, the film was a flawed masterpiece; in Scott’s restored version, it is, quite simply, a masterpiece." - Time Out.

21st Century L.A.

Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) prowls the steel-and-microchip jungle of 21st Century Los Angeles. He's a 'blade runner' stalking genetically made criminal replicants. His assignment: kill six Nexus-6 targets loose in the city that have fled from servitude off-world. Their crime: wanting to be human.

The story of Blade Runner is familiar to countless fans. But few have seen it like this. Because this is director Ridley Scott's own vision of his sci-fi classic. This version omits Deckard's voice narration (added at the insistence of the studio for the original theatrical release and subsequent VHS version - allegedley to telegraph plot points to the audience after they felt the plot was too difficult to follow without explanation). This version also develops in slightly greater detail the burgeoning romance between Deckard and the Rachael character (Sean Young) and removes the 'uplifting' finale which seems to show the two characters escaping their fate to a near-paradise (by comparison) life filled with hope, light, fresh air and happiness.

The result of all this revisionism is a heightened emotional impact: a great film made greater. Most intriguing of all is the newly included 'unicorn vision' or dream that amny commentators have claimed suggests that Deckard himself may be one of the breed of humanoid automatons he is hunting.

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

A restored and remastered DVD version of the 1992 Blade Runner - The Director's Cut, which has been unavailable for several years, will be pressed once more for a special four-month limited release.

Brooding

Blade Runner starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos and Daryl Hannah made its first appearance in U.K. cinemas way back in September of 1982, dazzling audiences with its stylish, brooding look into the future. From its intelligent, provocative story line to its stunning camera work and state-of-the art special effects, Blade Runner opened the door to a new vision of tomorrow.

Set in a multi-ethnic, overcrowded, high-tech city of the future, Blade Runner was also a benchmark in production design and helped propel the 'cyberpunk' look into mainstream consciousness. The film’s impact on the science fiction films that followed it cannot be overstated.

The full main cast includes not only Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young and Daryl Hannah but also Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, William Sanderson, Joanna Cassidy, Joe Turkel, Brion James, James Hong, Kevin Thompson, Bob Okazaki, Hy Pyke and Morgan Paull. The feature runs for approximately 1 hour and 52 minutes and is rated 15.

Blade Runner is a film full of questions - chief among them: is Deckard himself a replicant? As with all things in the future, you must discover the answer yourself...

Anyone interested in Blade Runner could do a lot worse than go back to the original source material to see where this storyline first came from: Philip K. Dick's novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The author's work has been the source materila for numerous blockbuster feature films aside from Blade Runner. Among them Total Recall (from We Can Remember It For You Wholesale), Johnny Mnemonic, Minority Report, Paycheck and the recent Richard Linklater 'rotoscoped' feature version of A Scanner Darkly). For more information on all things Philip K/ Dick, check out the author's official website: www.philipkdick.com

Blade Runner - The Director's Cut is in the shops on DVD now, from Warner Home Video, presented in its original aspect ratio (2.40 Widescreen/16:9 Transfer).

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