Bladerunner (various incarnations)

Movie Studios have this annoying habit of telling directors what to do to their films. Sometimes it's telling Paul Verhoeven that he's shown entirely too many views of Sharon Stone's Nether Regions, or mentioning to Kevin Costner that his latest wolf picture is about 2 hours too long (or that the cost of his latest sea epic is rapidly approaching the Federal deficit). Either way, the film maker has to cut footage before their films will be released. This has lead to a rash of unrated videos, and the ubiquitous Directors Cut video's. This is not, always a bad thing though. Case in point, Blade Runner.

The popular sci-fi film is the story of a group of artificial humans who illegally return to Earth, in a quest to find their creator, and to find some real reason for their existence. Decker (Harrison Ford) is a cop who's pulled out of retirement to track down and retire (a.k.a. kill) these replicants (played by Rutger Hauer, Brion James, Joanna Cassidy and Daryl Hannah). Decker goes to the Tyrell corporation (where the replicants are made) and interviews Rachel (Sean Young ... I fell in love with her after seeing this movie (this was before I met my wife though)) in order to test his detection equipment. He has a hard time getting a lock on Rachel, because she doesn't know she's a replicant. The big problem with replicants, explains Tyrell, is that they have no memories to base their lives on, so they gave Rachel 'memories'. She's worried about the test results, and later goes to Decker who spills the beans on what she is; Naturally she doesn't take this very well. Decker finds that he's developing feelings for Rachel, but he also has a job to do, so he follows up a lead, and finds Zhora (Cassidy). She nearly throttles him to death, then takes off running. Decker finds her, and guns her down. Unfortunately for Decker, Leon (James) finds him, and just as he's about to get killed, Rachel arrives and shoots Leon. Decker takes Rachel back to his place, where they decide they both are more than slightly interested in each other. Meanwhile (back at the ranch), Roy and Pris (Hauer and Hannah) have found a way to get to Tyrell: J. F. Sebastian (William Sanderson (of Larry, Daryl and Daryl fame)). Sebastian takes Roy to see Tyrell, only to have Roy kill Tyrell and Sebastian (that's gratitude for you). Decker hears about it, and goes back to Sebastian's place, finds Pris, and retires her (only after she tries to retire him of course). Roy returns, finds the last of his only friends dead, and spends the last ten minutes of the film in a one on one hunt with Decker. Just as Decker is about to plunge to his death, Roy reaches down and saves him, tells him about his short life, and quietly dies. Decker gets reminded (by another cop played by Edward James Olmos) that there's still a replicant at his apartment, and thinking that was a threat rushes home to find Rachel still OK. They get in his car and drive north to beautiful skies and freedom. All in all an excellent film; there's lots of neat scenery (which obviously inspired the set designers for every movie set in a grungey future), lots of action, voice-overs from Ford to fill in the plot, and even a happy ending for Ford and Young. It seems that Ridley Scott (better known for his Alien flicks) wasn't happy with those last two items, but to get the film out, he went along with it. And because of that, we also get a director's cut of the video.

Big plus: The Directors cut is letterboxed. For those of us that didn't get to see the film in a real theater (as opposed to one of those multiplex jokes) or were stuck with the small screen, we now get to see the whole scene.... and boy is it impressive. You don't even notice the missing voice over, and when you do, you think of how intrusive it was. We also see a previously chopped scene, where Decker has a vision of a Unicorn, supposedly in response to his wondering if he himself is a replicant (though I personally don't see it). This version ends with Decker and Rachel leaving the apartment, and finding (symbolically enough) the unicorn that Olmos has left on the floor; none of this driving through the mountains, with Decker telling us how they're going to live happily ever after, for all eternity. (ed. note - this was written before the advent of DVD's and the easy access to widescreen formatted movies)