A good movie should have the following characteristics. It should be entertaining, have a lot of hi-fi action scenes and have a good plot. BladeRunner never made it big financially but it did become famous as a cult movie.

The theme of the movie is man made life like replicas of human beings who begin to attack humans in a bid to get back a life of their own. The movie plays on man's desire to create life and defeat death. The movie is about robot evolution called the 'Nexus Phase' in which robots are created who are virtually identical to human beings and are called 'Replicants". The replicants are "superior in strength and agility and at least equal in intelligence to the genetic engineers who created them"."They were used off-world as slave labor, in the hazardous exploration and colonisation of other planets. They were designed to copy humans in every way except their emotions." They were expected to develop their own emotional response during the course of their life. They had a four year life-span.

The movie makes you think. Aren't we all in the same situation that the humanoids were in? They had a fixed span of life..we do too. It was a race against time for them because they had a very short time to live..its the same with us.

Till a few minutes before Roy knew he was going to die he was violent and aggressive. Yet in his dying moments he shows a changed attitude.Roy rescues Deckard and pulls him out of danger. He sits down and relates some of his life's experiences to Deckard and remorsefully adds "All those moments will be lost in time like tears in the rain". If he wished he could have killed Deckard, but as the Deckard in the background gives his explaination "Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life, any life. All he wanted was the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long do I have?"

Rachael is a replicant too. But she is a humanoid with a difference. Her 'maker' Tyrell implanted childhood memories into her. Memories which she never experienced herself..memories of some little girl who really went through them. In a way it is unfair for Rachael to find out that those cherised memories aren't really hers; that the mother whom she believed gave birth to her isn't her real mother. Yet she is led to believe that she is a human being like the rest of us.

Blade Runner has all the makings of a winning sci-fi film. It has a story based on a futuristic setting. It has some excellent scenes and good photography. The central plot was very intriguing too. There were a couple of suspense packed scenes which made the viewer grip his chair in anticipation of the scene to follow. The theme behind the movie is very thought provoking. In the end Deckard elopes with Rachel. He knows that Rachel was a 'special experiment' of Tyrell and that she doesnt have a fixed span unlike the other replicants. Deckard decides to live with Rachael and spend as much time as they can together. After all we don't know how long we have left to live as humans either.

Blade Runner is an exceptionally good movie with really cool special effects for a film made in the early 80's. Even though it never got acclaimed as a "great" sci-fi movie the basic theme behind the movie made it famous and gave it the "cult-movie" status. It was a movie much ahead of its times and one that will always be a classic.

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