Blade Runner

Blade Runner 1982 is an American dystopian film set in the near future (2019) and features robots who talk and act like humans.

The story involves an ex-blade runner, people hired to find and "retire" these robots after they staged a rebellion and were made illegal on earth. Who is forced back into this role after a Replicant is discovered.

The story also features a group of four Replicants, the leader of which is attempted to find a way to extend his life- the robots are only set to last four years.

The Blade Runner provides an excellent futuristic backdrop to an otherwise reflecting film. Remove the future and the robots and you essentially have a film-noir. The police officers and fugitives, even the romance between the protagonist and the replicant represents the sort of relationship ever present in Noir films. The term for this is Neo-Noir, a futuristic vision of the 1940’s classics.

The setting of the city is fantastically kitsch, with huge advertisements for companies like Pan-Am and Coca-Cola. The entire place has a Tokyo feeling to it with bright lights, and too many people.

The Replicants are such fantastic villains, because they seem human and to all intents and purposes are human but aren’t because they don’t have an emotion at all and have no problems killing people, however towards the end, Roy, the leader of the replicant group on earth dies, and he does so with such emotion that you seem to forget that he is not human.