Too bad the filmmakers didn't try to recapture the modest virtues of the Dick novel, which (despite many flaws of its own) has a humor and humanity that are nowhere felt in 'Blade Runner.
They all plod along while sometimes dazzling, sometimes boring special effects whiz by and Ford's climactic confrontation with Hauer approaches. Instead of tension building, though, things are grinding to a halt, including Hauer's gears.
Paradoxically, Scott's crowded, misty, neon streetscape seems even murkier; fuzz I chalked up to VHS tapes is production designer Lawrence G. Paull dumping ashtrays in the air.
It takes a particularly weird kind of sincerity to end a movie that has been for its entire running time an exploration of surfaces... with its most sublime and humane gesture.
