mark.houlder

I like French cinema and Sophie Marceau in particular, so i was expecting great things of this film, but i have to say i was disappointed. It's not awful, but it's not great either - the first half of the film is pretty poor, but it redeems itself to some degree in the latter stages.

After the first half hour i thought i had paid to see a soft-porn flick, such was the lack of plot, direction and character. Not a lot happens to begin with except Marceau s****ing every bloke who glances her way, plus the occasional scene with her infirm mother - a broken woman who chose duty over love in her choice of husband. The film then progresses to chart Marceau's path along the duty vs. love road, although it does so in a very contrived way.

The characters are fairly one-dimensional, and it's not until the last hour or so that there is any real emotion to the film. By this time the director seems to have lost the plot, and the film changes tone very noticeably (think: From Dusk 'til Dawn - ok maybe not that bad, but bad enough). One minute it's a drama, then it's an action flick. Then back to drama again, and very disjointed it is too. It finally ends back in the drama fold, and does at least ask a few questions about the theme of the film, Fidelity, but for a film that's 3 hours long they're not very deep and not very well portrayed, and i left the cinema thinking: "what a missed opportunity!". Disappointing.

This film is, simply, a great work. The direction, photography, and sound are all superb - the cast is great, and the story is - well, the story is special. I'm a great fan of Philip K. Dick, the author of the story on which the film is based, and i'm pleased to say that the film does him great justice (even though it is only very loosely based on his story, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"). Without this story, Bladerunner would still have been a good sci-fi film, but with it, it moves into the realm of philosophy, and commands a much greater impact.

It is basically a story about what it is to be human, and like most good philosophical works asks more questions than it answers. The oft-discussed question of whether Deckard is or is not human himself is, to a degree, irrelevant - the significant point is not _what_ he is, but _who_ he is, and whether his origins matter more than his actions. This question is asked of every major character in the film - Deckard, Batty, and Rachel, and mirrored in many of the minor characters. While we know which characters are biologically Human, which of them are most human-natured is much more ambiguous, and the final question (amongst many others) asked by the film is not 'What are they?' (asked of the replicants), but 'What are we, as humans?'.