Blade Runner: The Final Cut

UPC: 883929146697

Studio: Warner Home Video

MPAA Rating: R   Contains:[Violence, Not For Children]

Summary: A blend of science fiction and noir detective fiction, Blade Runner (1982) was a box office and critical bust upon its initial exhibition, but its unique postmodern production design became hugely influential within the sci-fi genre, and the film gained a significant cult following that increased its stature. Harrison Ford stars as Rick Deckard, a retired cop in Los Angeles circa 2019. L.A. has become a pan-cultural dystopia of corporate advertising, pollution and flying automobiles, as well as replicants, human-like androids with short life spans built by the Tyrell Corporation for use in dangerous off-world colonization. Deckard's former job in the police department was as a talented blade runner, a euphemism for detectives that hunt down and assassinate rogue replicants. Called before his one-time superior (M. Emmett Walsh), Deckard is forced back into active duty. A quartet of replicants led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) has escaped and headed to Earth, killing several humans in the process. After meeting with the eccentric Eldon Tyrell (Joe Turkel), creator of the replicants, Deckard finds and eliminates Zhora (Joanna Cassidy), one of his targets. Attacked by another replicant, Leon (Brion James), Deckard is about to be killed when he's saved by Rachael (Sean Young), Tyrell's assistant and a replicant who's unaware of her true nature. In the meantime, Batty and his replicant pleasure model lover, Pris (Darryl Hannah) use a dying inventor, J.F. Sebastian (William Sanderson) to get close to Tyrell and murder him. Deckard tracks the pair to Sebastian's, where a bloody and violent final confrontation between Deckard and Batty takes place on a skyscraper rooftop high above the city. In 1992, Ridley Scott released a popular director's cut that removed Deckard's narration, added a dream sequence, and excised a happy ending imposed by the results of test screenings; these legendary behind-the-scenes battles were chronicled in a 1996 tome, Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner by Paul M. Sammon. ~ Karl Williams, Rovi

Category: Science Fiction

Awards: Best Cinematography – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Costume Design – British Academy of Film and Television Arts Best Production Design/Art Direction – British Academy of Film and Television Arts U.S. National Film Registry – Library of Congress Best Cinematography – Los Angeles Film Critics Association Best Original Score – null Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Art Direction – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Visual Effects – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Visual Effects – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best Visual Effects – Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Best DVD – Las Vegas Film Critics Association Best Original Score – Hollywood Foreign Press Association Best Costume Design – British Academy of Film and Television Arts

Features: Introduction by Director Ridley Scott
Three Filmmaker Commentaries: Ridley Scott
Executive Producer/Co-Screenwriter Hampton Fancher, Co-Screenwriter David Peoples, Producer Michael Deeley and Production Executive Katherine Haber

Visual Futurist Syd Mead, Production Designer Lawrence G. Paull, Art Director David L. Snyder and Special Photographic Effects Supervisors Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer

Blade Runner: The Final Cut

Format: Blu-ray

Release Date: 01/04/2011

Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 2.40:1

Audio: DTHD null

Runtime: 117 Minutes

Sides: 1

Number of Discs: 1

Language(s) English,French

Subtitles: English,French,Spanish

Lucia Bozzola

Critics and audiences didn't care for it in 1982, but Ridley Scott's Blade Runner has since risen from cult object to classic of postmodern science fiction. A dystopian view of the future as a decaying, nostalgia-ridden junk culture, it features enormous neon billboards, ad blimps, and soaring Mayan temple-esque skyscrapers, evoking an infernal consumer society divided between those divinely living in the clouds and the multi-cultural exploited masses inhabiting the permanently dank streets. Only the robot "skin job" replicants understand the value of life and freedom. As Deckard's search for the replicants becomes a philosophical rumination on man, machine, and life, Blade Runner's striking production design and visual effects (supervised by FX maestro Douglas Trumbull) underline the cost to humanity of technology-obsessed late capitalism. Blade Runner's increasing stature merited the 10th anniversary release of the "Director's Cut," which rendered the film even more evocatively ambiguous by adding a brief unicorn dream and eliminating the studio-mandated voice-over narration and tacked-on "happy" ending. ~ Lucia Bozzola, Rovi

Cast and Crew: Charles Knapp  Actor 
Kimiko Hiroshige  Actor 
Robert Okazaki  Actor 
Michael Deeley  Producer 
Hampton Fancher  Executive Producer 
Hampton Fancher  Screenwriter 
David Peoples  Screenwriter 
Darryl Ponicsan  Screenwriter 
Ridley Scott  Director 
Vangelis  Composer (Music Score) 
Bud Yorkin  Producer 
Brian Kelly  Executive Producer 
Harrison Ford  Actor 
Rutger Hauer  Actor 
Sean Young  Actor 
Edward James Olmos  Actor 
M. Emmet Walsh  Actor 
Daryl Hannah  Actor 
William Sanderson  Actor 
Brion James  Actor 
Joe Turkel  Actor 
Joanna Cassidy  Actor 
James Hong  Actor 
Morgan Paull  Actor 
Kevin Thompson  Actor 
John E. Allen  Actor 
Hy Pyke  Actor 

Country: USA