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20. Blade Runner - Time to Die

“Quite an experience to live in fear, isn’t it? That’s what it is to be a slave.”

In our last entry, I talked about how production design contributes to action. Here, forget about it. The production design in Ridley Scott’s 1982 adaptation of Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? makes the production design in Aliens (or pretty much any other film) look like it was put together by third graders with papier-maché. If kick-ass lighting and a brilliant use of the Bradbury building were all this sequence had going for it, that would be plenty, but that’s only the beginning.

Blade Runner often gets noted for its many levels. It effuses subtext more than just about any film of its ilk. Note the dolls in the room where Deckard finds Pris. Note the way in which Batty taunts Deckard throughout, telling him “That’s the spirit!” when he fights back. He’s teaching him about raging against the dying of the light. He’s saying “Welcome to my world.”

The action sequence as object lesson is fairly rare, but here it works wonders.

It doesn’t hurt that Roy Batty is one of the best villains in movie history. One of the things that makes a great villain is empathy. If you can feel a villain’s plight, relate to the problem they’re trying to solve, they suddenly become much more compelling. You find yourself questioning your own sympathies and judgments.

Here, Roy Batty simply wants to live. That he cannot, in spite of his great strength and intelligence, is the central tragedy and theme of the film. Because, in fact, none of us, regardless of strength or intelligence, can escape his fight. And neither can Deckard, but that’s another kettle of synthetic fish.

The suggestions that Deckard is [spoiler] are scattered throughout the film but appear at least twice here. In an oblique sense as Scott juxtaposes the Deckard and Batty repairing their hands, and in a slightly more direct moment when Lt. Castillo tells him that he’s done “a man’s job.”

But back to Batty and his awesomeness for a moment. After he breaks two of Deckard’s fingers, he gives him back his gun. He’s that kind of motherfucker. Later, out of nowhere, he grabs a dove. Who does that!?! And is there any other character who could end an action sequence with a soliloquy?

Finally, if the action-film-as-art-film motif weren’t apparent enough, you’ve got Vangelis bringing it home (for the second time on this list).

By the way, if you’ve got the good guy trapped between your knees and you’re ready to deliver your killing blow, don’t drop him and run across the room just so you can do a bunch of flips before you hit him again. That’s, like, in the henchwoman faq.

Just the last little bit, but it includes the monologue that Rutger Hauer (partly) improvised.

See also: The rest of Blade Runner, David Lean lenses action-as-art in the attack on the train in Lawrence of Arabia, Kurosawa does it in the attack on the red castle in Ran.

Next: Even unarmed, Charlton Heston is a bad motherfucker.