Review Detail

Blade Runner has long been my all-time favorite film. Having said that, I could never quite settle on what version I preferred. Key things that always bothered me were the unicorn scene and the drive-away ending, both of which felt very out of place. Yet I wanted as much extended material as possible. No silly narrative.

Quite by chance though I ended up watching with the narrative, something I've never done all the way through. I've seen the movie 10 times or more, so I figured it might be interesting. Much as I remembered, the lines were notably uninspiring at times, but the information provided by the narrative fleshed out so much of what is already a great storyline. And Decker is no poet or public speaker, why wouldn't his descriptions be dry and awkward? I think without the narrative would still be my personal go to version because the periods of silence are so powerful, but by a narrow margin, and I would recommend that first time watchers watch it with narration.

Audio/visual: worked for me. The amazing visuals and sound track kept me riveted, with such clean edits that I never was distracted.

Narrative: perfect. Everything I wanted in the movie. Some of the extended scenes I didn't remember, and I wonder if I missed them in watching the other versions, or didn't see one of them (though I own the DVD). The pacing was spot on. This was never meant to be an action film; the long periods of storyline and character development only serves to make the few action scenes all the more gripping. It's dark and romantic and stirring and disturbing. And holy frack! The casting and writing in this film blows my mind - what an epic tap into the wellspring of storytelling!

Enjoyment: There are no words for it. This is my go to version once I can figure out how to burn a DVD that is 7GB in size (I watched it on my computer in fragments and still loved it!). This is it man, this is my cut of choice!!!