BLADE RUNNER — CLASSIC FILM PICK

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Ridley Scott's 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" was marred by a ham-fisted narration track that ruined the overall effect of Scott's original vision due to editorial meddling from the production studio.

It wasn't until 1991 that a "director-approved" version was released that deleted Harrison Ford's monotone voiceover commentary.

Over the years, seven different versions of the film have been released. Ridley Scott's brilliant, digitally remastered, 25th anniversary "Final Cut" gets the last word as the representative version to judge it by.

Stylistically, "Blade Runner" is a baroque mélange of retro and futuristic industrial elements set in a dark and grungy atmosphere of permanent night. Scott employs a punk rock/new wave esthetic that is both glamorous and sexy.

The film incorporates a plethora of influences that include film noir, neo-noir, and cultural and political satire. The filmmaker establishes the human eye as an image system to convey layers of thematic subtext.

It's 2019 and Los Angeles is a dystopian nightmare. Fire and smoke billow from the tops of skyscrapers in a smog-covered city that looks more like Hong Kong than the City of Angels. Its trash-strewn streets are a literal melting pot where rising steam and smoke clouds your vision.

Impoverished citizens of every nationality and rebel bent bustle under constant rain. Corporate logos of '80s-era companies illuminate with artificial neon and digital light. Cars called "spinners" fly vertically and horizontally like helicopters amid the crammed urban conditions.

Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) is a grizzled veteran "blade runner" — a career assassin of genetically engineered organic robots called replicants. Deckard dresses like an ironic transplant from a Dashiell Hammett novel. Here, Harrison Ford's squeaky-clean Star Wars character Han Solo turns into a cynical and corrupt anti-hero with a romantic side.

Manufactured by the Tyrell Corporation, replicants are humanoid slaves who work on "off-world" planet colonies inhabited by the very rich. Programmed for four-year life spans, these organic robots are forbidden by law to set foot on Earth. Hence, Deckard's dubious task to distinguish the lifelike androids from humans, and destroy them.

The arrival of five rogue replicants, led by Rutger Hauer's Aryan-looking character Ray Batty, sends Deckard on a search-and-destroy mission that brings into relief discrepancies between the conscious and subconscious mind of humans and replicants alike. Even Deckard might not be the free-will human being he imagines himself to be. The artificial reasoning abilities of advanced Nexus 6 replicant models might just be more humane than their human creators.

Rated R. 117 mins.

WATCHMEN

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Dave Gibbons's hardboiled superhero graphic novel is brought to stunning visual life by director Zach Snyder.

Here is a convoluted adult fantasy that provides an off-key political tone to its alternate reality of 1985 America where Richard Nixon is still President, and the Doomsday Clock forever sits at five minutes to the hour of imminent apocalypse thanks to a Soviet nuclear threat.

Put out of work by Nixon's decree outlawing masked avengers, unless they work for the government, a group of former superheroes known as the Watchmen variously reconnect after the violent murder of their macho former member, the Comedian AKA Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan).

The Comedian's demise implies a similar fate for the rest of the group.

Rorschach (devilishly played by Jackie Earle Haley), in his ever-morphing inkblot mask and raspy voice, narrates the complex mystery that plays out with richly designed flashbacks that reveal the personal histories of the likes of Laurie Jupiter (Malin Akerman), and her atomically transmogrified yet anatomically correct love interest Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup).

Outrageous sexual elements and extreme violence give "Watchmen" its well-deserved hard R rating.

Opposed to its child-friendly poster, this is not your run-of-the-mill action/adventure movie for the kids.

At over two and a half hours, "Watchman" is a full-frontal adult sci-fi satire that's as enjoyable as it is thematically confounding.

There's something here to make every member of the audience squirm.

(Warner Brothers) Rated R. 160 mins.

 

DARK STREETS

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There's nothing worse than a soft-boiled noir.

Splashes of '30s era style and tame blues music contain wobbly Gabriel Mann ("Mad Men") as New Orleansesque child of privilege and club owner Chaz Davenport.

Dashiell Hammett this is not.

Associates are turning up dead and Chaz is having money problems when he auditions and hires Madelaine (Izabella Miko), a beautiful new singer to compete with his girlfriend/chanteuse Crystal (Bijou Phillips).

Based on Rachel Samuels' stage play, "Dark Streets" is a disappointing film that only manages to entertain during some of its musical set pieces. Elias Koteas is squandered as a menacing police detective. 

(Samuel Goldwyn Films) Rated R. 85 mins.