DVD Search - Blade Runner [Director's Cut] [Widescreen/Fullscreen] DVD

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, All Movie Guide

Harrison Ford - Rick Deckard
Rutger Hauer - Roy Batty
Sean Young - Rachael
Edward James Olmos - Gaff
M. Emmet Walsh - Harry Bryant
Daryl Hannah - Pris

Ridley Scott's sci-fi classic Blade Runner comes to DVD in a director's cut that makes several important changes from the theatrical version. This cut removes Rick Deckard's (Harrison Ford) narration and the finale, and restores ten minutes of footage, including scenes between Deckard and Rachael (Sean Young) and dreams of a unicorn that suggest he may be a humanoid, which Scott later confirmed. These changes may or may not please longtime fans of the film, but the DVD itself is disappointingly skimpy -- which isn't really surprising, considering that Blade Runner was one of the first titles available in this format. The double-sided disc includes a widescreen, anamorphic transfer on one side and a standard format version of the film on the other, plus production notes and English, French, and Spanish subtitles. A better disc would have put the theatrical version of the movie on one side and the director's cut on the other -- never mind adding extras like a Scott commentary or art galleries -- but until a deluxe set of either version of Blade Runner arrives, fans will have to be satisfied with this DVD. ~ Heather Phares, All Movie Guide