Guest Review: The Fugitive (1993) vs. Chain Reaction (1996) vs. U.S. Marshals (1998)

by ScottDS

Let’s ring in the new year with Commentarama’s first three-way! (Uh, yeah.) Anyway, I’ll be looking at a favorite film of mine, Andrew Davis’ 1993 classic The Fugitive and comparing and contrasting it to his 1996 follow-up, the wrong man thriller Chain Reaction, along with Stuart Baird’s 1998 Fugitive pseudo-sequel/spinoff U.S. Marshals.

Based on the TV series created by Roy Huggins, The Fugitive features Harrison Ford as Richard Kimble, a Chicago vascular surgeon who is found guilty for the murder of his wife. He claims it was a one-armed man and manages to escape after his prison bus careens off the road and is destroyed by a train. With Deputy U.S. Marshal Samuel Gerard and his team on the trail, Kimble finds his way back to civilization and attempts to find out the truth. It turns out that the murder was orchestrated by Kimble’s associate, Dr. Charles Nichols. Nichols had been developing a new drug that Kimble had found caused liver damage. Nichols hired a one-armed former police officer named Sykes to get Kimble out of the way, but Sykes ended up killing Kimble’s wife. Gerard slowly reaches the same conclusion and Kimble manages to subdue Nichols in a climactic fight.

I remember watching this on HBO when I was 11 or 12 and being totally transfixed. It has a perfect first act and it was the idea of one of the editors to feature non-chronological flashbacks of Helen Kimble’s murder in slow motion with a desaturated palette. Andrew Davis directs and at the time he was best known for the films that put Steven Seagal on the map: 1988’s Above the Law and 1992’s Under Siege, along with the Chuck Norris actioner Code of Silence and the dated yet entertaining political thriller The Package. The pacing is just about perfect and it’s a miracle the filmmakers manage to stage so many close calls without anything feeling contrived or coincidental. (One possible exception would be when Kimble is hiding behind the door in the elderly hospital patient’s bathroom – it’s the only part where I’m like, “Really?”) It’s a testament to Davis and his team that the film holds together considering they were revising the script as they went along and a few set pieces (the chase through the St. Patrick’s Day parade for instance) were only developed after shooting had already started.

The acting is excellent. Ford proves why he was The Man in the 80s and 90s, playing both action and intellect with equal aplomb. Tommy Lee Jones is Gerard and he actually won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar (beating out Ralph Fiennes for Schindler’s List!). He commands the screen and would pretty much go on to play Gerard-type authority figures for the next decade. His fellow marshals are played by Joe Pantoliano, Daniel Roebuck, Tom Wood, and L. Scott Caldwell. They have a natural camaraderie and you feel like they’ve all worked together for years. There’s no forced exposition or cheesy moments where we “learn” something about them. They each have at least one great line or moment, with Wood’s character nearly getting killed in a standoff. Pantoliano is entertaining as always and Roebuck gets one of my favorite lines: “If they can dye the river green today, why can't they dye it blue the other 364 days of the year?”

The film was shot on location in Chicago with the train crash and iconic dam jump shot in North Carolina. Davis came up in an age when action films were shot with coherent camerawork: no shaky-cam or rapid-fire editing here. Everything is logically laid out and we always know where everyone is. James Newton Howard’s score is one of the best action scores of the 90s and could be heard in many subsequent action movie trailers. Davis also had a great stock company: actors that he worked with on multiple films. I can’t name them all here but it seems like every other supporting actor from The Package and Code of Silence is in this movie, notably Ron Dean and the late Joe Kosala (a real former Chicago cop) as Detectives Kelly and Rosetti. We’ll see them again later.

And here they are. After the financial and critical success of The Fugitive, Davis squandered it all with 1994’s Steal Big Steal Little. After that, he returned to familiar territory with Chain Reaction, which features Keanu Reeves as Eddie Kasalivich, a student machinist on the run from the law after a scientific project he’s involved with is destroyed and the lead scientist is killed. The project is a technology that can obtain clean energy from water by separating the hydrogen molecules via a process known as sonoluminescence. The entire project is bankrolled by Paul Shannon (Morgan Freeman), an enigmatic (to say the last) figure with ties to various government entities. Kasalivich and physicist Lily Sinclair (Rachel Weisz) are framed for the accident and spend much of the film fleeing from the FBI and the goons employed by Shannon’s associate, Collier (Brian Cox), who operates a mysterious organization known as C-Systems.

Richard Kimble’s story was relatively straightforward: A hires B to kill C who is chased by D as C tries to find B who leads back to A. Eddie’s story is more like this: A and B are on the run from C and D while occasionally being assisted by E who works with F. This movie has twice the plot and characters as The Fugitive but is only half as entertaining. The actors are all fine, including Keanu – he gets a lot of crap but from everything I’ve read, he seems like a nice guy and I’m glad John Wick has developed something of a cult following. Morgan Freeman is excellent as always and manages to walk the line between ally and threat. He gets the speech at the end about how releasing the clean energy project to the world would end up making things worse, but lest you think otherwise, this is not a polemic. (One reviewer sadly pointed out that things seem to have gotten worse without the benefit of this technology!) The film ends with Eddie destroying Collier’s iteration of the project and putting all the plans for it online, along with evidence to clear him and Lily of any wrongdoing. Shannon kills Collier and… something something.

Instead of Tommy Lee Jones and Joey Pants, we have Fred Ward and Kevin Dunn as two FBI agents. Both actors are talented but their banter is often forced (and unfunny) and I’m not quite sure who’s on their team. The first act of this film introduces character after character and it’s like, “Is that a cop? Is that an FBI agent? Is that an assassin? Is that a scientist?” It’s hard to tell and, unlike The Fugitive, no one really makes much of an impression. We also get half a dozen other actors from that film, including the two aforementioned detectives (playing two different detectives, though it would’ve been cool if they played the same ones!). Tech stuff is all fine, I guess, with the main set pieces consisting of Eddie outriding a CGI shockwave, an exciting foot/drawbridge chase down Michigan Avenue, and a snowmobile chase shot on location in the winter. As with the previous film, Davis proves you can shoot an action film while maintaining visual sanity.

The film is entertaining in a “boring Sunday afternoon” kind of way. But all the mystery is much ado about nothing. We have conversation scenes in offices where we learn Freeman’s character has ties to the State Department. We have FBI agents looking through files that reveal a connection to DARPA. On one hand, these are all background details that add gravity to the situation and a sense of history. On the other hand, NONE of it matters. Someone at one point asks, “Jesus, who the hell is this guy?” By the end, we’re still not sure! This film also features plenty of characters frantically typing which is rarely exciting, but here it’s not too bad. This was back when the idea of “uploading” something to the Internet was still a novelty for many people. Oh, and this is a pet peeve of mine, but the credits list the characters using their full names, so it’s like: a.) I didn’t know the name of the actor, b.) I didn’t know the name of their character, and c.) I didn’t know they had a last name!

And finally, U.S. Marshals, a kinda sorta Fugitive sequel-slash-spinoff. Same producers, some of the same actors, different writer and director. Tommy Lee Jones returns as Gerard, who has to track down a fugitive named Mark Sheridan… or Mark Roberts… or Mark Warren. (I’m just gonna call him Mark.) Wesley Snipes plays Mark and while Kimble was more or less an everyman, Mark is a former CIA/Special Ops commando. Mark is accused of killing a DSS agent. He’s on the same prison transport plane as Gerard (who’s on board for an unrelated case). A Chinese prisoner attempts to kill Mark with a concealed zip gun. He shoots out the window, which causes the pilot to attempt an emergency landing on a too-short backwater road. Mark escapes and the Marshals are called in. There’s a mole in the State Department and Mark has to figure out who framed him before Gerard and the DSS get to him.

Stuart Baird also directed Executive Decision and I’m pretty sure he was hired to direct this movie only because he knows how to stage an exciting cabin depressurization. (He would do it a third time in Star Trek: Nemesis!) The script was written by a first-timer and it kinda shows. The banter is forced and unfunny this time and while I have no problem with Gerard and Mark on the same plane, I do have a problem with how Gerard gets involved in the case. In The Fugitive, he has government authority and the local sheriff (played by Nick Searcy, aka Bev’s nemesis!) is happy to turn over the crime scene. In this film, however, the local cop on the scene is portrayed as a buffoon. I’ve said it before but you don’t have to make your hero look good by making the other guy look stupid. And while Snipes is game, his character isn’t entirely sympathetic. Kimble saves a boy’s life while Mark threatens a trucker and his wife at knifepoint. Some of the performances come off as artificial and perfunctory, especially French actress Irene Jacob who gets saddled with the clichéd “girlfriend” role. Kate Nelligan, on the other hand, acquits herself nicely as Gerard’s boss.

Oh, and I didn’t even mention Robert Downey Jr.! He’s in this movie as the DSS agent assigned to Gerard’s team. He’s also game but he falls into what Roger Ebert once referred to as the Alan Alda Rule: “Any character in a murder mystery who is excessively helpful to the main character invariably turns out to be the killer.” I’m still not entirely sure what his role is in all this. Is he the mole? Is he one of several moles? Is he just trying to protect someone else? How far does this all go? I guess there’s a reason why The Fugitive was nominated for Best Picture while this one languishes in cable rerun world. (Where, ironically, it usually follows airings of The Fugitive!) The plane crash sequence is exciting though it’s obviously model work. By contrast, the train crash in The Fugitive was real and only the shot of Ford leaping off was a composite. Some of the other major set pieces involve a shootout in a cemetery and Mark swinging from a roof to a moving train. Jerry Goldsmith scored this film and he introduces a heroic action motif that he would use again in Star Trek: Insurrection later in the year (and yes, I noticed!).

I say it in every other review: it’s a miracle any movie gets made and released, let alone a good one. The Fugitive is Hollywood doing what it does best: cast and crew firing on all cylinders, taking a good story and telling it in an engaging way. Chain Reaction, on the other hand, is more of a potboiler, and proves how difficult it is for a director to make lightning strike twice. And U.S. Marshals shows what can happen when you take a simple story and needlessly complicate it.

“I didn’t kill my wife!”
“I don’t care!” (The original line was “That isn’t my problem!”)

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Film Friday: Ender’s Game (2013)

Ender’s Game wasn’t a bad movie from a technical standpoint. It was competently made. It had nice enough images. And it held my interest. BUT... it held my interest for the wrong reasons, and the moralizing, which has become the standard Hollywood treatment of war, annoyed me greatly. It flies in the face of human natures and hypocritically assigns moral-correctness to a cowardly tiny minority philosophy. Blech.

Plot

The plot is very generic. In essence, this film is a quasi-remake of Starship Troopers if it were done with the ideological sensibilities of Real Genius. What you have is Ender, a bright young kid who thinks strategically. So strategically in fact that he’s recruited to a military-run school that will teach him strategy through a series of games. Harrison Ford runs the school and recruited Ender personally. The reason for the school is that fifty years prior, the insects from Starship Troopers attacked the Earth. The Earthers were able to defeat them, but they learned they could only win with superior strategy... shocking! So they have built their military around finding people with strategic gifts, and they have decided that kids are best at it. Ergo, they are training kids to lead the drone fleet against the bugs.

The story begins with Ender being bullied in the school until he correctly analyzes the situation and kicks the bejesus out of the bully. Rather than getting himself expelled, this begins his promotion up the ranks. The next hour of the film involves Ender moving up the ranks, angering those above him, and learning how to win the games they play. This section shares the boot camp feel of Starship Troopers right down to Ender (almost) killing another student and than wanting to give up being a leader.

Anyways, as this is ongoing, the adults moralize about using kids to fight this war. They are using kids because kids have more creative minds. Eventually, Ender gets sent to lead the fleet and he and the other kids seem genuinely upset to learn that they may actually be involved in killing the enemy... even though they’ve been attending a school that teaches them combat and promises them that if they graduate, they will be made the commanders of the space fleet. Wow! Who could have seen that coming? In the end, Ender is told to play one final game. But is there something we don’t know about this game? Yeah, you can guess how that will turn out.

Blech

I have three problems with this film. Let’s address them in order they arise.

First... There isn’t a moment of this film that feels original. The training scenes are similar in theme and style to the training in Starship Troopers. The young soldiers being shocked to learn they are helping the military comes from Real Genius. The hero learning the truth in his dreams feels stolen from Final Fantasy: Spirits Within. And the things the film focuses on, like showing us zero-gravity training, are things every sci-fi movie does. Beyond that, the film is packed with tropes like the big bully white kid who needs to be brought down by the hero, the girl who falls for the nerd and must break away from the insecure male who dominates her, the hard-ass sergeant who tells us when Ender is finally approved as a hero, etc. Seen it all before... many times.

Secondly... While this film held my interesting, it did so for the wrong reason. Good films hold your interest by getting you involved with the plot or the characters, and you lose yourself in their world. This one kept my interest because I know there was a twist coming and I wanted to see if it was as obvious as it seemed. How did I know this film had a twist coming? Because this film beat you over the head with the idea that “there’s something they aren’t telling Ender!” Indeed, almost every scene with the adults ends with this suggestion.

Third... Finally, we come to the politics. Look, war is terrible. Anyone who’s ever been involved and seen the devastation, the death, the destroyed lives can tell you that. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is opposed to war in all circumstances. This is the problem with liberalism and Hollywood. They play at being pacifists and they act like no decent person could possibly want to fight a war or that no sane person could go through war and kill others without becoming insane. That’s bullship.

For one thing, whether or not war is good or bad depends on whether or not the war is wrong. If you are fighting to defend your country from an invader set to kill and destroy all of you, then war is a great thing. If you are trying to save six million Jews and free another 100 million Europeans from Hitler, then war is a great thing. Free the slaves? Good thing. Stop a genocide? Good thing. Hollywood forgets this. In Ender’s Game, the enemy wants to wipe out humanity. In those circumstances, people will enthusiastically sign up to fight this war. This is a good war with a clear mission. People don’t whine and moralize about whether or not wars like that are right or moral. So instantly, the film feels like it is establishing a false moral framework.

Further, for a huge segment of the population, killing honestly isn’t a problem. Soldiers do it all the time in war, and all but a tiny fraction come back and live normal, psychologically healthy lives – contrary to the Hollywood myth. Gang bangers and inner-city youths killed each other in droves in the 1980s and didn’t shed a tear. No one in jail feels guilty. History is replete with mass killings like Rwanda and the Chinese cultural revolution, where ordinary people decided to get even with people they saw as the enemy because of their wealth, their status or their ethnicity and they hacked those people to death. What’s more, they did this enthusiastically, they thought they were in the right, and few of them ever bothered to change their minds. And let’s not forget that Hollywood glorifies killing even as it pretends it’s heroes can’t handle killing.

This image that soldiers are deeply conflicted souls unwilling to kill an enemy unless tricked into it by their commanders and that, once they kill someone, they all break down and become pacifists just flies in the face of the human condition. And it simply strains credibility that a child like Ender, who opens the film by aggressively trying to main and destroy a bully so the bully will be too scared to try again in the future will be so averse to killing the enemy in a war for which he’s voluntarily training.

And let me add another layer to this stupidity: the enemy isn’t even human! They are bugs. Think about the last time you swatted a fly or stepped on a spider. Did you need counseling? Did you agonize for days about whether or not you would be able to kill said fly or spider? This film would have you believe that somehow you would agonize if faced with much larger, much more violent spiders bent on your destruction. That’s laughably stupid.

What this comes down to is fraudulent/hypocritical pacifism. I say “fraudulent/hypocritical” because the whole film is ideologically misleading. It starts by forcing the idea upon you that humans are by their very natures pacifists. This is pounded into you time and again – good humans aren’t violent and don’t kill, it destroys us psychologically to do so! And the film makes it clear that the burden of justifying war falls on the commanders, but then doesn’t let them try to prove it. Basically, they just keep saying, “It’s us or them,” and then they get frustrated and scream, “Just do what I tell you!” This leaves no doubt that pacifism is the only legitimate ideology here.

But then the film never offers a pacifist solution to the war. In other words, at no point does the film show how a war with murderous alien bugs can be resolved short of killing the bugs before they kill us. Instead, the characters solve the film by fighting and killing all the bugs and then weeping that they should have been pacifists. This is hypocritical bullshit.

Of course, the film tries to suggest that a pacifist solution would have been possible when Ender observes that the bugs haven’t attacked the Earth since we drove them back to their home planet, and when he claims the aliens weren’t really hostile as evidenced by them having their massive fleet just hovering above the planet rather than attacking the human fleet the moment the humans appeared. Of course, the fact that the aliens haven’t attacked Earth doesn’t make them pacifists, it means they don’t have the force to do it. And the fact they didn’t charge forward like idiots when they saw the humans means nothing, as defenders almost never do that – the benefit of being a defender is maintaining a defensive position as the other guy is forced to charge into your gunfire.

This is a stale and stupid message that I’m sick of seeing in modern science fiction. It’s unreal because it flies in the face of human nature which hasn’t changed in thousands of years. It’s annoyingly hypocritical to be blasted by a false ideology that doesn’t have the courage to show how that ideology is supposed to work, and then smears the people who keep the believers of this cowardly philosophy safe. Even more hypocritically, the people who are pushing this crap idea of pacifism then exploit violent action scenes to make their hero and sell their film to audiences. Hypocrites.

You know, this isn’t the worst film I’ve seen, but it is entirely derivative and it’s very tiring. I would not have missed it if I never saw it.

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Film Friday: Presumed Innocent (1990)

Presumed Innocent is the best legal thriller ever filmed. It’s gripping, it’s tense. It’s incredibly realistic. It’s populated with real characters with real motivations. It’s unpredictable. It’s thoroughly enjoyable. Needless to say, I recommend it.

** Major Spoiler Alert **

Plot

Presumed Innocent is a legal thriller that revolves around the murder of an assistant district attorney a few weeks before the district attorney must stand for re-election against a challenger who is proving to be more than a match. Desperate to get the murder solved immediately, the district attorney assigns the top prosecutor, Rusty Sabitch, to investigate the murder. Unfortunately, Rusty was having an affair with the victim and soon becomes a suspect. As the story twists and turns, it becomes a courtroom drama that leaves you more and more convinced that Rusty did it.

Why This Film Works

Legal thrillers are one of the more popular genres. Sadly, most legal thrillers are garbage. Whether it’s cardboard characters or plots that are laughably fantastic, few legal thrillers are more than generic action films where the heroes wear suits instead of guns. Some even rely on chase scenes to create drama. . . lookin' at you Grisham. So when you come across a legal thriller with brains and integrity, it’s pretty impressive. Presumed Innocent is such a thriller. And what makes this film work is the complexity of the characters and how their motivations drive their actions which in turn drive the plot, rather than the plot dictating their actions. Indeed, this film is driven by the conflicts that arise when characters with different motives clash and when their own internal motives conflict. This creates uncertainty for the audience as to how events will play out and it gives the film a natural and real feeling as the plot springs from the consequences of the actions of the characters rather than from abstract plot points.

Consider for example, the main character: Rusty Sabich (Harrison Ford). On the surface, Rusty is a hard-nosed prosecutor. He’s a bit of an idealist who has lost his idealism and never quite made it to the top because he lacked the ambition to be the top dog. He makes up for that by drowning his time in minutia. He also has a lovely wife and son, who he seems to love. But as we scratch the surface, we learn that there is another side to him as well. This side had an affair with a woman at the office, Carolyn Polhemus, and he became obsessed with her. Even now, long after the affair has ended, he still seems obsessed.

Rusty’s character will be tested when he is asked to investigate Polhemus’ death. Can he overcome his obsession? Will his affair with her come out? Hiding it goes against his duty to his boss and will hinder his investigation. Taking on the assignment also will alienate him from his wife. All of this causes tremendous drama throughout the film. Adding to that drama, by the way, was the brilliant casting of Harrison Ford. Ford brings so much confidence and good will to the role that we find it hard to believe that Rusty can be so weak and obsessed as he seems, and that makes these revelations shocking for us in a way that casting someone more malleable would not. Indeed, it’s jarring to think of Ford as obsessed and that pulls us into the character in a visceral way and unsettles us.

Rusty alone would have been great drama, but he’s just the beginning. Conflicting with Rusty, you have Rusty’s boss Raymond Horgan (Brian Dennehy). Raymond is a friend of Rusty, but he’s also a politician with questionable integrity, and as Raymond slowly loses his bid for reelection as the District Attorney, he starts to lash out at Rusty. When he loses, he even decides, out of spite, to drag Rusty down as punishment for his own failures. This adds massive amounts of drama to the story, which is then made all the stronger in that the winner of the election, Nico Della Guardia and his underling Tommy Molto, both dislike Rusty. So when the evidence points toward Rusty, they run with it and spin everything against Rusty. Even the characters Rusty encounters while doing his job, like Dr. Kumagai, are in divided camps over the election and may or may not be helping or hindering the investigation. All of this gives the sense of Rusty being under siege both from without and within as he races against the clock on a doomed mission that will blow up on him much more spectacularly than you ever could have guessed.

At the same time, you have Rusty’s wife (Bonnie Bedelia), who is a desperate housewife. She feels like her world has collapsed, as she’s blown her chance at a career because she can’t finish her dissertation and her marriage is a failure as Rusty had the affair. And while Rusty is in the middle of being prosecuted, he needs to work to repair his relationship with his wife, or at least not make it worse.

All of this makes for a deep, deep film because each character feels real, i.e. they don’t just exist to make the plot work, and because most of them are unpredictable because their motives conflict with their obligations to Rusty, so you don’t know which way they will go until they finally act. Further, since these conflicts drive their actions and therefore the plot, the story feels tight. It doesn’t feel like a plot with characters jammed into it. This is excellent writing, and it continues even beyond the main characters. Indeed, you have fantastic characters throughout this film. Think about Polhemus, who uses men to work her way up the ladder and throws them away the moment she spots weakness within them. She plays with fire by building up insecure and weak men and then ripping away the security she has given them the instant she realizes they are weak. In this way, she causes them to feel deeply insecure and brings about their obsessions with her, which will ultimately be her undoing. Alternatively, consider Sandy Stern (Raul Julia) whom Rusty hires to defend him. Stern comes across as part oracle part statesman. He is easily one of the most impressive attorneys ever presented on film and the scenes with him are a joy to watch – made all the better by the truly solid acting of Julia. I know many attorneys who said they went to law school because they wanted to be Sandy Stern. Consider also Judge Larren Lyttle, who is one of the most realistic judges you will find on screen. He’s commanding and professional before the jury, but funny and friendly in his private conferences. He’s thoughtful and tempered and fair, yet no nonsense. He also has a complex past.

And that brings us to the legal aspect. As a lawyer, I pull my hair out when I see films make a mockery of the legal system: impossible computer searches for information that doesn’t exist and wouldn’t be kept on computer if it did. Juror misconduct. The famous “that’s highly unusual, but I’ll allow it” from judges who seem to start and stop their trials randomly to allow the plot to work. Rulings that make no sense. Attorneys who break all the rules of procedure and ethics as their opponents inexplicable sit on their hands. These things are cheating by lazy writers. Yet, Presumed Innocent never falls for that. The reason this film feels so well constructed is because it stays true to the characters and it stays true to the law. Presumed Innocent follows real trial procedures and uses rulings that would actually be issued. This was a fantastic decision because it imposed a sort of discipline on the writer (Scott Turow), which forced him to really think through how everything needed to happen for his story to make sense. In other words, he doesn’t fake it, i.e. this story happens the only way it could in real life. That is perhaps the greatest thing you can say about a story, that the writer presented a story which simply could not have worked in any other way, and that is the case here. Not only was this an excellent and entertaining story, a creative story with an original, unpredictable and twisting plot-line acted out by deep and complex characters, but in the end there is no other way this film could have gone given the underlying facts. That is evidence of truly inspired writing. It’s also no coincidence that Presumed Innocent, in my opinion, is not only the most realistic, but also the best legal thriller out there.

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Film Friday: Cowboys & Aliens (2011)

When a film appears with a fantastic concept, a solid cast, and a great look. . . and then it bombs. . . you know something went very wrong along the way. That’s the case with Cowboys & Aliens. Only in this instance, everything went wrong. Put simply, no one associated with this project had any idea what to do with this concept.

** spoiler alert **

Directed by Jon Favreau, Cowboys & Aliens is the story of some people in the old West who battle aliens who are faster, stronger and can’t be killed by human weapons. . . except when they can. That’s all you need to know because everything else about this film fails. Let’s go through the list of failures:

● The Actors: The actors seemed lost in this. It’s like they didn’t realize they were in a Western. Daniel Craig plays the lead. He did an excellent job eliminating his English accent, he just didn’t know what to replace it with. So he ends up kind of mumbling English words that don’t really fit in any dialect and certainly don’t fit in the American West. Olivia Wilde, who plays the required female character, may not even have read the script for all she brought to her role. Harrison Ford wasn’t great either. He plays a bad guy with a heart of gold, only he was never able to find that line where we actually like him. The supporting actors never clicked either. It’s like no one explained to anyone who these people were before they began shooting.

● The Director: It’s often difficult to separate the writers and the director, but here it was easy. Few scenes made sense from a visual perspective, and it was almost impossible to care about what was happening on the screen.

The perfect example of this is the scene where the aliens first attack the town. The aliens have come to grab townsfolk, but there’s no reason to do this. Indeed, while we’re later told some vague garbage about the aliens studying the humans, there’s no evidence the aliens are doing that and there’s no reason they would need to. It would be like studying ants to learn their military weakness. Not to mention, the townsfolk are eventually found stored in some cave rather than being examined, which calls into question why they were taken at all. Moreover, when the aliens attack, they blow things up all over town for no reason whatsoever. They are more than capable of just flying overhead and grabbing people -- no one can stop them -- but they instead choose to blow up buildings for no apparent reason. In effect, the raid is pointless nonsense.

Further, while the aliens are blowing things up and taking people you don’t know, the camera follows the action almost randomly. Basically, you see people running back and forth until they get taken while the heroes shoot at the alien ships, and all of this is done in the dark by similarly-dressed characters that we don’t know. So throughout this scene, the audience has no idea what happened or who did what, nor does any of it matter. In effect, it’s ten minutes of pointless explosions with no substance. That’s on the director.

Even worse, this becomes the pattern for the film as things happen for no logical reason, as you are incapable of following which characters are doing what or why, and as nothing really interesting happens in any scene. “Stuff blows up” pretty much describes the whole film.

● The Writers: The writing is horrid. To explain this, let’s continue with the first raid by the aliens. I mentioned above that the raid was pointless, but that’s not entirely true. The raid was conducted for two obvious purposes: (1) so the hero, who was about to be killed by the townsfolk, could be saved and his importance to the rest of the story affirmed by those same townsfolk, and (2) so that the loved one of each main character could be taken by the aliens so they would all have a reason to begin the movie. That’s horrible writing when the only purpose to a major scene is to establish plot points. Not to mention that wipes out all the conflicts except one -- retrieve the loved ones. But that’s just the beginning of the problems with the writing.

The story begins with a mystery: who is Daniel Craig. Craig wakes up with an alien device on his arm and no memory. He makes his way to town, where everyone else seems to thinks he’s a criminal. The writer carries this mystery on for about an hour, way too long given that the mystery is neither the point to the film nor all that interesting. Indeed, once you learn that everyone wants him dead, solving the rest of the mystery becomes pretty pointless, but the story continues to act like it matters. Conversely, while the mystery is quickly solved, it simultaneously leaves too many details unsolved for too long. Consequently, the audience is repeatedly left in the dark for the first thirty minutes or so as characters talk knowingly about things we know nothing about and plot points happen which make little sense to us because we don’t understand the background.

The next problem is that after the aliens raid the town, about twenty minutes into the film, the rest of the film becomes a series of random and deeply clichéd scenes. It feels like the writer came up with a list of things which could happen in a western and just inserts those one after another. There’s also never a sense that the scenes really relate in any meaningful way.

The motives for the aliens are rather stupid too and show that the writer has no scientific background. The aliens apparently want gold because it’s valuable, even though the creation of gold would take less energy than bringing their spaceships to Earth in the first place. The aliens round up people to experiment on them to “test their weaknesses” even though we’re also told the aliens are so far advanced that they see humans as “insects.” And then we’re told the aliens plan to destroy the planet for no reason whatsoever except to jack up the significance of the attack on the aliens.

Finally, there is one huge problem which falls on the writers and the director equally: there isn’t a moment of this film which varies from expectations. That’s a cardinal sin in any film and especially in something as supposedly unique as this. To give you a sense of this problem, consider that there isn’t a single scene which doesn’t end the way you expect from the moment the scene first begins. You know who will save whom and how they will react. Moreover, you will have seen this moment coming from the moment the characters met because EVERYTHING in this film is telegraphed in the most ham-fisted way. When two characters dislike each other, you know right away they will save each other and become friends. A character who can’t shoot will of course make an impossible shot to save the day. When a character mentions a knife, not only can you be sure that it will save that character, but you will know at roughly what time in the film that will happen. And when that scene comes, you’ll know it because the director will point the camera at the knife to open the scene, then will show you where the events will take place, then the characters rush to that location so the alien chasing them can do something incredibly stupid and SURPRISE the knife saves the day!! Yeah, this film is like that. . . repeatedly.

Cowboys & Aliens began with a great concept, but no one involved with the film knew how to handle it. Indeed, there isn’t really a competent element of this film. The actors didn’t know how to treat their characters, the director couldn’t compose a single interesting scene, and the writers were just guessing about what a science-fiction Western would include. And that caused this excellent concept to be wasted.

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Some Thoughts On Blade Runner

There are seven known versions of Blade Runner. This weekend, I watched the three BIG versions of Blade Runner back to back to back. Yes, yes I did. Why? Because one of the HBO channels was showing them. It was fascinating watching all three and seeing the differences and this got me wondering about a couple things I’d like to discuss. Feel free to share your own views and add any other issues you’d like to discuss.

Issue One: To Narrate Or Not To Narrate. Not. When the film hit theaters in America, the suits decided the film needed a narration in the beginning where Harrison Ford explains who his character and some of the others are, what the world is like, what his mission is, and basically what you’re watching. This narration lasts sporadically for the first 5-10 minutes. This sucks. When you see the later versions, especially the final cut, there is no narration and it is much easier to get into the ambiance of the film. The world feels more real and your mind is more awake understanding what is happening. Moreover, all the actors are excellent, as is the direction, and you absolutely don’t need the information provided by the narration to understand everything going on, so it adds nothing at the cost of much. Leaving the narration off improves this film by an order of magnitude.

Issue Two: And They Lived Happily Ever After (Until They Were Killed Outside The Apartment). The studio also demanded that Scott add a happy ending to the original release. The final cut removes this and it works much better. Indeed, the happy ending makes much in the film nonsense. The atmosphere of the film works because you have a sense that the earth has been run down to the point we see on screen. If, at the end, Deckard can just hop in his car and drive off to beautiful countryside, then why is everyone living in Craptopolis? Doesn’t that undercut the whole dystopia?

Moreover, this blows a hole in the question of whether or not Deckard is human. Gaff would not have let Deckard go rogue if he was a Replicant. So when Deckard tells us that Gaff lets him and Rachel go because he thinks Rachel will die any minute, that tells us Gaff doesn’t think Deckard is a Replicant. Case pretty much closed. Except, Gaff still leaves an origami unicorn for Deckard to find. Doesn't this mean Gaff thinks Deckard is a Replicant? Indeed, in the final cut, Deckard has a unicorn dream, suggesting that Gaff knows his memories, just as Deckard knows Rachel’s, i.e. he’s not real.

Issue Three: Animal, Vegetable or Mineral? So what exactly is a Replicant? The view most everyone seems to have held for years, me included, was that Replicants are machines. We’re told they’re manufactures and they’re called machines and skinjobs (i.e. metal covered by fake skin) throughout. They even appear to have superhuman skills. But upon further review, there are so many hints that Replicants are actually cloned humans. They speak at times of the Replicants being grown, and they use the term “bio” to describe them, suggesting living tissue. Moreover, none of the manufacturing comments at all preclude the Replicants being grown.

Issue Four: Who dat? Finally, I got to wondering, how would the film have turned out if they had used a different actor? Apparently, Gene Hackman, Sean Connery, Jack Nicholson, Clint Eastwood and even Arnold Schwarzenegger were considered. I think replacing Harrison Ford with any of these actors would have completely changed the tenor of the movie and it would not have been as effective. The one actor I could possibly see replacing Ford would be Kurt Russell, but that’s about it.

Thoughts?

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Guest Review: Air Force One (1997) vs. Executive Decision (1996)

By ScottDS. The success of Die Hard spawned a new genre: “Die Hard on a [blank]” with [blank] representing everything from a bus to a hockey arena. It was inevitable we would see “Die Hard on a plane” and two of the best examples are 1996’s Executive Decision and 1997’s Air Force One. However, while Air Force One is the more successful of the two, I believe Executive Decision is the leaner, more efficient film. Neither film is a work of art, however one is oblivious to its stupidity while the other is almost aware of it.

In Air Force One, Harrison Ford is President James Marshall, veteran Vietnam helicopter pilot and Medal of Honor recipient. We open with the capturing of Ivan Radek, a terrorist dictator in Kazakhstan. Three weeks later, Marshall delivers a speech at a Moscow state dinner. He reminds the guests that the U.S. will not sit idly by while atrocities occur halfway around the world. Meanwhile, a group of Radek loyalists posing as a Russian news crew is allowed to board Air Force One. Their leader is Egor Korshunov (Gary Oldman, a tad over the top).

Assisted by a traitorous Secret Service agent, Korsh and his men hijack the plane. Marshall is rushed to the escape pod (an ingenious, albeit fictional idea) while Korsh kills the pilots and sets a course for Kazakhstan. He calls VP Kathryn Bennett (Glenn Close) and demands Radek’s release from prison. Marshall, hiding in the avionics bay, calls the White House. Korsh has taken First Lady Grace and First Daughter Alice up to the cockpit area. Several hostages parachute to safety during refueling but one of Korsh’s men causes the parachute bay to depressurize. Korsh takes Marshall hostage and demands Radek’s release. Marshall acquiesces but eventually breaks free and kills Korsh while Radek is killed outside the prison. Marshall takes control of the plane but it's badly damaged during a firefight. An Air Force Pararescue plane evacuates the remaining passengers. The Secret Service agent reveals himself but Marshall escapes and the agent goes down with the ship.

This is an exciting movie! Wolfgang Petersen directs from a script by first-time screenwriter (and future Castle creator) Andrew Marlowe. This might be Harrison Ford’s last great action movie and he’s right at home playing a tough-talking Commander in Chief. The supporting cast is populated by familiar character actors like Paul Guilfoyle and Philip Baker Hall, and they all do good work. This film is also a great opportunity to explore Air Force One itself, an aircraft to which most of us will never have access. Editing, sound, and cinematography are all first-rate – this was the pre-shaky-cam era. The visual effects are top-notch (with one exception) and Jerry Goldsmith’s music score is heavy on action and patriotism (my local critic labeled it “cheddary”).

On the other hand, I feel Glenn Close overacts as Bennett. The Secret Service agent’s motive is never explained. There’s a useless subplot where SecDef Walter Dean (Dean Stockwell, channeling Alexander Haig) insists he’s in charge, despite what the 25th Amendment says. William H. Macy is fine as Major Caldwell but he tells Marshall he doesn’t know how to fly a plane… except he has pilot wings on his uniform! The script is full of the usual clichés, including a wire-cutting scene and a cell phone losing reception, and some of the dialogue is cringe-inducing, especially the Situation Room material where the overacting doesn’t help. The CGI shots of Air Force One crashing into the Caspian Sea are some of the worst effects seen in a major motion picture!

Executive Decision features Kurt Russell as David Grant, a think tank nerd. We open with a team of Special Forces operatives led by LTC. Austin Travis (Steven Seagal) raiding a Chechen mafia safe house on the hunt for a stolen Soviet nerve gas, DZ-5… but it’s not there. Cut to: David Grant learning how to fly. I can’t help but admire this blatant setup. Grant is notified that El Sayed Jaffa (the late Andreas Katsulas), one of the world’s most notorious terrorist leaders, has been taken into U.S. custody. Some time later, Oceanic Airlines Flight 343 departs Athens on its way to Washington D.C. It’s hijacked by Jaffa’s deputy director, Nagi Hassan (David Suchet), and his men. The film never explains how their weapons are already stored aboard the plane.

Grant is summoned to the Pentagon where SecDef Charles White (Len Cariou) is running the show. (The president is never named; the VP isn’t mentioned at all.) They listen to a message from Hassan, who wants Jaffa released. Grant believes Hassan himself arranged for Jaffa’s capture and that Hassan has the DZ-5 aboard the plane and wishes to detonate it over D.C., but how will they prove it? Travis has them contact Dennis Cahill (Oliver Platt), an engineer who has developed an aircraft called the Remora, which will allow a team to transfer mid-air on board the hijacked airliner. Travis wants Grant to tag along, even though he's out of his element. They’re met at Andrews AFB by Cahill and Travis’ team: Louie (B.D. Wong), Baker (Whip Hubley), Rat (John Leguizamo), and Cappy (Joe Morton). Once docking begins, things get bumpy and Cappy is knocked unconscious. Grant climbs up the docking sleeve to help but the stress is too great. Travis sacrifices himself, closing the hatch as the sleeve is blown away. Hiding in the avionics bay, the team has no way of contacting D.C.

Louie discovers a bomb, with DZ-5 canisters and a barometric trigger. Bomb expert Cappy has been rendered immobile but Cahill assists in its dismantling. After Jaffa is released, Hassan kills his second-in-command after the man asks if they’ll be diverting the plane from its course now that their mission is complete. Grant determines that Hassan’s men can’t know about the bomb, but the bomb’s computer had run a diagnostic: there must be a separate trigger man on board. Rat and the men kill the lights and storm the cabin. The trigger man and all of the terrorists are killed but Hassan kills the pilot and co-pilot, so guess who has to land the plane? Rat kills Hassan and, with the assistance of flight attendant Jean (Halle Berry), Grant manages to land at Frederick Field.

I’ve always liked this movie and I believe it’s unfairly overlooked. First-time helmer Stuart Baird (an Oscar-nominated editor by trade) directs from a script by action vets Jim & John Thomas. Baird and his crew get the job done as efficiently as they can. It may sound backhanded but when it comes to the action genre, efficiency is a good thing. Like AF1, editing, sound, and cinematography are all first rate and we’re never confused. The actors mostly do a good job and we get a sense of the team’s camaraderie. Russell is his usual likable self and I like that the bookworm saves the day, not to mention the idea of all the heroes using their gifts: Grant, Cahill, Travis' team, and even the Air Marshal who gets the first shot at Hassan. The flying effects are excellent though the landing features some shoddy model work. Jerry Goldsmith is on autopilot, but that’s better than most composers on their best day!

Both films are a lot of fun and treat their subject matter seriously. However, while AF1 tries to ratchet up the tension with forced melodrama, ED has no time for such things. It’s nine minutes longer but it’s lean: there’s no traitor, no romantic subplot, no kids, no third act surprise. It’s inevitable that Harrison Ford would turn into, as one critic put it, “President Indiana Jones,” but again, I have to admire the scene in ED featuring Kurt Russell learning how to fly, as if the filmmakers are telling us, “Yeah, we know!” Neither script is Oscar-worthy but I would almost prefer no memorable dialogue to Ford’s hammy “Get off my plane!” (but it is satisfying!). The Pentagon scenes in ED are much better than the Situation Room scenes in AF1. Both films feature dependable character actors, but the ones in ED manage to exude the right amount of professionalism and grace under pressure; the ones in AF1, not so much.

While neither film is a masterpiece, ED comes across as slightly more authentic – perhaps because it’s aware of what it is – while AF1’s obliviousness causes it to come across as… almost too “cinematic” with plot developments that happen because we expect them to happen and characters spouting clichés: “Five more minutes!” “There’s no time!” I also find it interesting that one film is directed by a veteran director working with a first-time writer… while the other is directed by a first-time director (albeit a seasoned film professional) working with veteran writers. I guess this proves the old adage: if it ain’t on the page, it ain’t on the stage, even if the stage is a plane.

“These things almost land themselves, don’t they?”

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Defending Temple of Doom

by ScottDS

Few films stir up more conversation on this blog than Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Steven Spielberg’s 1984 sequel (prequel, actually) to Raiders of the Lost Ark. I love the first three Indiana Jones films equally and while Raiders is rightfully accepted as a masterpiece, Temple of Doom does nothing but divide. It’s either an action-packed piece of pulpy fun... or an annoying mess of a movie – Spielberg and George Lucas doing nothing more than indulging themselves at the expense of the audience (and, at times, their stomachs).

I don’t think Temple of Doom is better than Raiders but it isn’t nearly as bad as its detractors suggest. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do, mainly serve as a delightful throwback to the two-reel serial adventures of old. It’s still more fun and more action-packed than most summer blockbuster movies made today. Having grown up watching these films on television, it never once occurred to me that this film was inferior. The central Macguffin may not be as relevant or meaningful as that of the first film (Sankara stones vs. the Ark of the Covenant) but does it really matter? After all, it’s only a plot device. Did anyone watching North by Northwest care about the secret microfilm? If Indiana Jones – played once again by Harrison Ford who’s game for anything – is interested, then we’re interested, and since the exposition is handled relatively well (i.e. not boring or confusing), then we know all we need to know and we’re not confused an hour into the film.

This brings me to sidekicks. Short Round never bothered me. In the pantheon of kid sidekicks, he is far from annoying and, unlike so many unnecessary supporting characters, he doesn’t just pop up out of nowhere (like Jar Jar Binks). Using history as a template, it’s established that Indy befriended Short Round after the kid’s parents were killed when the Japanese bombed Shanghai. The relationship between the two is rather endearing and “Shorty” gets a few good lines of dialogue as well.

And then there’s Miss Willie Scott. I know what you’re thinking… she does nothing but scream her way through the film. But that’s exactly what a sheltered showbiz dame like that would do in those situations. (It’s a miracle Kate Capshaw married Steven Spielberg after the arthropod hell he put her through!) I suppose when people watch this film, they can’t help but compare her to the strong, feisty Marion Ravenwood from the first film. Willie is your classic damsel in distress and her rocky relationship with Indy results in a fun seduction scene that is equal parts romance and screwball comedy. Besides, it works both ways: people who like her don’t have a problem and people who hate her get to see her put in uncomfortable situations!

As for villains, while Indy and Belloq had an interesting working relationship, Mola Ram, high priest of the Thuggee cult, is just a badass! He was played by an imposing Indian actor, the late Amrish Puri, and just oozes villainy without being campy. Subtle? Not at all. But he’s no 60s-era Batman villain either, speechifying with cheesy catchphrases. His sheer physical presence makes up for the lack of a previous “relationship” with Indy and the basic idea of the Thuggee cult is horrifying enough without any mustache twirling. He’s certainly more memorable than Walter Donovan, the Nazi villain from The Last Crusade, and Agent Spalco from Crystal Skull. Roy Chiao appears to be having a blast as the Chinese gangster Lao Che in the opening of the film and Roshan Seth plays the bespectacled Chattar Lal, sneering Prime Minister of Pankot Palace and Thuggee acolyte.

As for the film itself, it’s beautiful to look at and to listen to. The cinematography by Douglas Slocombe B.S.C. is lush, vibrant, and he and Spielberg knew how to take advantage of the widescreen 2.35:1 frame. Interestingly, Mr. Slocombe never used a light meter – he would simply judge the amount of light based on the shadow his thumb cast over the rest of his hand. Unlike many summer blockbuster films made today, the action is easy to follow, geography and spatial relationships are properly established, and the film is bathed in more than two colors. (Seriously, did you ever notice most action films today are a mix of blue and orange?)

Ben Burtt’s sound effects give the film a creepy ambience (as if the insects didn’t do that already) and the music score is one of John Williams’ masterpieces. He reuses his famous Raiders march from the first film and develops a love theme, a theme for Short Round, a march for the slave children, and he even reprises the Raiders “sword trick” music for a gag in which Indy reaches for his gun to dispatch two sword-wielding bad guys... and finds his holster empty. Even Cole Porter gets in on the fun with an opening musical number featuring Willie performing “Anything Goes” in Mandarin. I have no idea what audiences were thinking at the time but I applaud the filmmakers for doing something different. Imagine if The Bourne Supremacy began with Jason Bourne attending a performance of Cats!

The Oscar-winning visual effects by ILM are top-notch. Miniatures, stop-motion, matte paintings on glass – they simply don’t make movies like this anymore. I’m not a member of the “CGI sucks!!” brigade – computers are just a tool – but the limitations of real-world objects and the photochemical process meant filmmakers more often than not had to improvise. For instance, a modified 35mm Nikon still camera was used to film the mine car miniatures. Speaking of mine cars, the last twenty minutes of this film are non-stop action: the fight in the temple, the aforementioned mine car chase, the waterfall, the rope bridge, the death of Mola Ram, and the arrival of the British riflemen... it simply never ends and it takes real talent to sustain that kind of excitement over an extended period of time without overwhelming the audience. Unlike most of the Star Wars films, we’re not constantly cutting from one battle to another and unlike the other Indy films, it’s less stop-and-start and more “This goes to 11!” Now that I think of it, the opening 20 minutes are a rollicking ride, too: an old-fashioned music number, a melee in the club (in which Indy accidentally punches a cigarette girl!), a car chase on the streets of Shanghai, a plane crash, and an inflatable boat ride down the slopes of the Himalayas and a raging river, all scored with wall-to-wall John Williams music.

In conclusion, this film has plenty to offer. It may not be fair to compare it to its predecessor or action movies of today but it does pass one very important test: if it comes on TV, I don’t change the channel!

“Kali Ma!”

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Film Friday: Blade Runner (1982)

Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner is brilliant. This is filmmaking at its best because it takes science fiction and stretches it to its fullest potential, both in terms of storytelling and as an intellectual experience. It’s also noteworthy for being massively culturally relevant because it redefined “dystopia” for a new generation, and in so doing, it signaled the end of the counter-culture’s influence in science fiction.

** spoiler alert **

Loosely based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, Blade Runner is the story of Richard Deckard (Harrison Ford), a police specialist who hunts down and "retires" escaped androids, known as Replicants. Deckard is pursuing four Replicants, led by Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), who illegally returned to Earth to find their maker, who they believe can extend their lifespans, which are artificially limited to four years. Despite the seeming simplicity of this summary, Blade Runner is a highly complex and innovative film. Indeed, it singlehandedly redefined the confines of science fiction as well as our view of dystopia.

Dystopia Lost, Dystopia Changed

Prior to Blade Runner, dystopian films invariably involved societies that appeared perfect on the surface, but were soulless underneath. From Logan’s Run to Rollerball to Fahrenheit 451, these societies appeared health, happy and peaceful, but something was always missing, some element of humanity was stripped away. This concept fit perfectly with the clash between the counter-culture and the conformity society created after World War II. But Blade Runner changed that.

The dystopian world of Blade Runner is dark, dirty and full of the twisted dregs of humanity. This is a world that destroyed itself, not with a bang but with neglect, where those who could escape to a better life moved to the off-world colonies, leaving humanity's flotsam to fester in the collapsing, polluted world left behind. Moreover, this dystopia came about because society fell apart, not because society was too tightly controlled, as was the case in prior dystopian films. Thus, whereas the pre-Blade Runner view of dystopia was the counter-culture’s view of the worst aspects of conformist society run amok, the dystopia in Blade Runner was society’s view of the worst elements of the counter-culture run amok. And with rare exceptions, this has become the view of dystopia which dominates films today. Blade Runner marks this serious shift in societal attitudes.

Where No Science Fiction Has Gone Before

Blade Runner also singlehandedly expanded the bounds of science fiction. How? By realizing that science fiction need not follow the trappings and conventions of science fiction, and by realizing that any story can be interpreted as science fiction. Indeed, nowhere in Blade Runner will you find spaceships or laser-gun fights or aliens and strange planets. Even the very dialog of Blade Runner is unlike anything that came before. For example, whereas science fiction always had a penchant for long, quasi-melodramatic dialog and grandiose plots, Blade Runner introduced the minimalism of film noir, with punchy but sparse dialog and inwardly focused plots.

All of this was new and it showed that any story could be told as science fiction, not just stories about rocket ships. In fact, I would argue that Blade Runner actually demonstrated that science fiction was not so much its own genre, as it had always been understood to be, but was really a setting in which other genres could be played out. In other words, Blade Runner showed there is no such thing as a science fiction movie, there is instead a crime story, or mystery, or comedy, or love story set in a science fiction world.

It’s Great Because It Expands Your Mind

Finally, let’s finish with what makes Blade Runner such a great film. Beside the obvious, i.e. great acting, super writing, and eye-catching settings, it was the philosophical questions that lifted Blade Runner to another level. The primary question Blade Runner asks is what does it mean to be human. It does this through an examination of three characters: Deckard, Rachael and Roy.

Rachael (Sean Young) is a Replicant who doesn’t know she’s a Replicant. She works for the head of the Tyrell Corporation, the creator of the Replicants, and her life seems real enough. She has an apartment, a job, photos of her childhood, and even memories of growing up. She walks, talks, breathes, thinks and appears to experience the complete range of human emotions. Yet, she is a machine. But does that really matter? She seems human in every way. She is emotionally aware. She has no expiration date like the rest. And she doesn’t even know she’s a machine. So what makes her different than the humans around her?

Roy is easily the most interesting of the three; he’s also the most human (intentionally so). Roy is programmed to be an assassin, and he knows he’s a Replicant. He also knows he’s designed to expire after a five year lifespan, a safeguard put in place because Tyrell discovered Replicants would develop full-blown emotions after five years. . . a quicker time than human children mature. Roy desperately wants more life, and the way to get that, he thinks, is to confront his maker. But when Tyrell tells Roy it’s impossible to extend his life, Roy kills his creator. He then decides to toy with and kill Deckard as a form of spite for his own pending death. But at the last moment, just before Roy expires, he suddenly realizes the value of life and he saves Deckard from death. In effect, Roy fully matures from a mere tool to an emotional child to a fully-mature adult, which is a remarkable transformation for a machine.

Here we are given several issues to consider. First, we are asked what makes Roy not-human. Unlike Rachael (or even the other Replicants who came to Earth with Roy), Roy has fully repudiated the false past he was given. He’s also thrown off his programming and set about becoming his own man. He's an independent being with free will, and he craves life and, ultimately, comes to understand its value. In this way, Roy becomes more human than many real humans will ever be. Yet, he is a machine. So is he alive or isn’t he? And what makes him so? Also, what of Roy’s relationship with his creator? What does Roy killing his creator say about Roy’s independence and ours? Would we lash out the same way if we learned that our creator was some flawed, mortal creature? Would that set us free or would it lessen us?

Lastly, we come to Deckard, the human we use for comparison. But there’s a problem with Deckard. . . we’re not actually sure he’s human. At no point does Blade Runner ever say or even openly suggest that Deckard is not human, but the evidence is there. He has no real life outside of his job and no past about which we learn. He has memories of childhood and photos, but they are very similar to Rachael’s packaged memories. He’s emotionless, cold, and functional, i.e. he’s machinelike. Moreover, the one character we know to be human, because he’s physically defective, is Gaff (Edward James Olmos), and Gaff treats Deckard with disdain much as if he knows Deckard is merely a deluded machine. So is Deckard human or not? We don’t know and that’s the beauty of the writing. We are left to try to justify his humanity in ways that differentiate him from Roy and Rachael, and in the process we explore what it is that makes us human and alive.

Finally, one last issue worth discussing is hinted at throughout the film: why make Replicants at all? Why not just make functional robots, rather than making them look and act human? One possible explanation involves the purposes to which these Replicants were put -- “off world hit squad” and “pleasure model,” i.e. because they would need to blend in. But what does that say about us? It’s easy to see these as purposes to which we would actually put androids, but that means we would be striving to put ourselves on a par with God, only to use our greatest achievement (creatures created in our own image) to satisfy our basest instincts or our most evil desires. That doesn’t say much for us, does it? And what does it say that we don’t even give these creatures free will? As self-made God, we certainly seem to come up short. So could we create real Replicants to achieve only our better instincts? Would we? And if they are alive for all practical purposes, should we even try to create them, given our obvious flaws?

These are the kinds of questions Blade Runner raises and we can spend hours debating them. Indeed, this is where science fiction draws its strength, in its ability to ask these questions without angering the audience by insulting their faith, or race, or gender, or whatever. And by injecting these kinds of questions into what would otherwise be a simple story about a police officer hunting some escaped killers, this film suddenly takes on a level of depth that makes this more than just a film; it becomes an educational experience, as we are asked to examine our own beliefs and thereby understand ourselves a little bit better.

And that makes it pretty darn cool.

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