Although initially unsuccessful in North America, Blade Runner (1982) achieved international popularity and quickly earned cult film status. Loosely based on the 1968 novel The Android Hunter by Philip K. Dick, the film directed by Ridley Scott, years after its release, is considered one of the best examples of science fiction cinema of all time. The soundtrack by the great Vangelis is also valuable. The film, which will air tonight at 9.23pm on Iris, stars Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh and Daryl Hannah.
Set in future Los Angeles, Rick Deckard, a former LAPD (Los Angeles Police Department) cop and replicant hunter, is forcibly called back into service even though he would like to retire from his work among the blade runners. Deckard is given a new job when a group of sophisticated Nexus 6 androids escape the Off-World colonies and clandestinely return to Earth.
What they are looking for is their builder, “guilty” of having endowed them with a human appearance and superior physical abilities, but a very short life. Deckard’s hunt will be violent and intense, made more complex by the presence of Rachael, a very particular experimental type of replicant, as feminine as and perhaps more than an authentic woman. Not without effort and suffering, the Nexus 6 will be “retired” one after the other until the final clash between the policeman and the alpha element of the group, the angelic demon Roy Batty.
