Blade Runner (1982)

Iconic neo-noir in a befouled sci-fi Los Angeles where humans and their machine replicas vie to be predators rather than prey.

One of cinema’s most vividly realised dystopias, the Los Angeles of Blade Runner is a nightmare cityscape of towering skyscrapers, vast advertising holograms and perpetual rain. Three years after the deep-space horror of Alien (1979), Ridley Scott imagined an urban future to rival Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. The ghost of Raymond Chandler’s bygone LA haunts its story of a Marlowe-like former detective (Harrison Ford) assigned to track down escaped ‘replicants’ – biologically engineered beings employed as slaves by their human masters.

Initially a critical and commercial flop, Blade Runner developed a huge cult following. Countless science-fiction blockbusters have tried to replicate it, but Scott’s original retains an unrepeatable intrigue in the central ambiguity of Deckard’s own identity.

“Science-fiction cinema is transformed forever in the furnace of production design.” Nigel Andrews

“Blade Runner distils the iconographies of dystopian science-fiction and transmogrifies them to produce the blueprint for seemingly every example of the genre to follow. As we have moved into the digital age and passed 2019, the year the film is set, Blade Runner’s analogue materiality now looks thoroughly retro-dystopian. But our deepest anxieties about the integrity of the self, our technology-constituted experience, environmental apocalypse and a polarised society in extremis have never felt more relevant.” Dario Llinares

“Lawrence G. Paull’s cityscapes, Jordan Cronenweth’s cinematography, Vangelis’s electronic score and Rutger Hauer’s soulful android were all astonishing innovations that redefined movie sci-fi.” Andy Lea

1982 USA, Hong Kong
Directed by
Ridley Scott
Produced by
Michael Deeley
Written by
Hampton Fancher, David Webb Peoples
Featuring
Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young
Running time
117 minutes

Ranked in The Greatest Films of All Time poll

Sight and Sound

Who voted for Blade Runner

Critics

Nigel Andrews
UK
Anjelika Artyukh
Russia
James Balmont
UK
Eurico de Barros
Portugal
Stuart Brown
UK
Jane Crowther
UK
Jordan Farley
UK
Beatrice Fiorentino
Italy
Michael Goddard
UK
Kevin Harley
UK
James Harrison
UK
Marián Hausner
Slovakia
Nick Hodgin
UK
Tom Huddleston
UK
Dimitris Kerkinos
Greece
Chris Knight
Canada
Gábor Köves
Hungary
Lars Ole Kristiansen
Norway
Andy Lea
UK
Matthew Leyland
UK
Sebastian Lindvall
Sweden
Dario Llinares
UK
Victoria Luxford
UK
Kevin Lyons
UK
Anna Machukh
Ukraine
Emily Murray
UK
Susan Napier
USA
Ian Nathan
UK
Marko Njegić
Croatia
Tommi Partanen
Finland
Storm Patterson
UK
Milan Pavlovic
Germany
Paolo Pellicano
Italy
Miguel Pendás
USA
Domino Renee Perez
USA
Pini Schatz
Israel
Kimberley Sheehan
UK
Fernanda Solórzano
Mexico
Marcel Stefančič
Slovenia
Ben Stoddart
UK
Teet Teinemaa
Estonia
Arthur Tennøe
Norway
Andreas Thein
Germany
Grant Watson
Australia

Directors

Antoneta Alamat Kusijanović
Shola Amoo
UK
Ivan Gaal
Australia/Hungary
Grant Gee
UK
Alex Gibney
USA
Peter Greenaway
UK
Mladen Kovačević
Serbia
Alexandre O. Philippe
Switzerland
Jonas Poher Rasmussen
Denmark
Raymond Red
Philippines
Małgorzata Szumowska
Poland