Blade Runner

"Ben Astar - Abdul Ben Hassan"

"Brion James - Leon"

"Joe Turkel - Tyrell"

"Joanna Cassidy - Zhora"

"James Hong - Hannibal Chew"

"Morgan Paull - Holden"

"Kevin Thompson - Bear"

"John Edward Allen - Kaiser"

"Hy Pyke - Taffey Lewis"

"I'm Deckard. Blade Runner. B Two sixty-three fifty-four. I'm filed and monitored."

"I was quit when I came in here. I'm twice as quit now."

"Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem."

"[Revealing to Rachael that she is a replicant] You ever tell anyone that? Your mother, Tyrell? They're implants. Those aren't your memories, they're somebody else's. They're Tyrell's niece's. Okay, bad joke, I'm sorry... No, really, I made a bad joke. Go home, you're not a Replicant... (sigh) you wanna drink? I'll get you a drink."

"I've had people walk out on me before, but not when I was being so charming."

"They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession. Ex-cop. Ex-blade runner. Ex-killer."

"Sushi. That's what my ex-wife used to call me. "Cold fish.""

"The charmer's name was Gaff, I'd seen him around. Bryant must have upped him to the Blade Runner unit. That gibberish he talked was city speak, gutter talk. A mishmash of Japanese, Spanish, German, what have you. I didn't really need a translator, I knew the lingo, every good cop did. But I wasn't going to make it easier for him."

""Skin jobs". That's what Bryant called Replicants. In history books he's the kind of cop who used to call black men "niggers"."

"I'd quit because I'd had a belly full of killing. But then I'd rather be a killer than a victim, and that's exactly what Bryant's threat about "little people" meant. So I hooked in once more thinking if I couldn't take it I'd split later. I didn't have to worry about Gaff. He was brown-nosing for a promotion, so he didn't want me around anyway."

"I didn't know whether Leon gave Holden a legit address. But it was the only lead I had, so I checked it out."

"Whatever was in the bathtub was not human. Replicants don't have scales."

"And family photos? Replicants didn't have families either."

"Tyrell really did a job on Rachael. Right down to a snapshot of a mother she never had... a daughter she never was. Replicants weren't supposed to have feelings... neither were blade runners. What the hell was happening to me?"

"Leon's pictures had to be as phony as Rachael's. I didn't know why a Replicant would collect photos. Maybe they were like Rachael... they needed memories."

"The report would be "routine retirement of a Replicant", which didn't make me feel any better about shooting a woman in the back. There it was again... feeling in myself... for her... for Rachael."

"I don't know why he saved my life. Maybe in those last moments he loved life more than he ever had before. Not just his life... anybody's life... my life. All he'd wanted was the same answers the rest of us want. Where do I come from? Where am I going? How long have I got? All I could do is sit there and watch him die."

"Gaff had been there, and let her live. Four years, he figured. He was wrong. Tyrell had told me Rachael was special: no termination date. I didn't know how long we had together... who does?"

"I watched him die all night. It was a long, slow thing... and he fought it all the way. He never whimpered, and he never quit. He took all the time he had, as though he loved life very much. Every second of it... even the pain. Then, he was dead."

"Stop right where you are! You know the score, pal! If you're not cop, you're little people."

"Talk about beauty and the beast — she's both."

"Is this testing whether I'm a Replicant or a lesbian, Mr. Deckard?"

"Painful to live in fear, isn't it? Nothing is worse than having an itch you can never scratch. Wake up! Time to die!"

"Fiery the angels fell; deep thunder rolled around their shores; burning with the fires of Orc."

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

"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die."

"You've done a man's job, sir!"

"It's too bad she won't live. But then again, who does?"

"PA Voice: A new life awaits you in the Off-World colonies. The chance to begin again in a golden land of opportunity and adventure!"

"You’re in a desert walking along in the sand when all of the sudden you look down, and you see a tortoise. It’s crawling toward you. You reach down. You flip the tortoise over on its back. The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over but it can’t — not without your help. But you’re not helping. Why is that?"

"Describe in single words, only the good things that come into your mind about your mother."

"It’s your birthday. Someone gives you a calfskin wallet."

"You’ve got a little boy. He shows you his butterfly collection plus the killing jar."

"You’re watching television. Suddenly you realize there’s a wasp crawling on your arm."

"You're reading a magazine. You come across a full-page nude photo of a girl. You show it to your husband. He likes it so much, he hangs it on your bedroom wall."

"You become pregnant by a man who runs off with your best friend, and you decide to get an abortion."

"You're watching a stage play. A banquet is in progress. The guests are enjoying an appetizer of raw oysters. The entree consists of boiled dog."

"Man has made his match. Now it's his problem."

"The purpose of this story as I saw it was that in his job of hunting and killing these replicants, Deckard becomes progressively dehumanized. At the same time, the replicants are being perceived as becoming more human. Finally, Deckard must question what he is doing, and really what is the essential difference between him and them? And, to take it one step further, who is he if there is no real difference?"

"In an earlier review of "Blade Runner," I wrote; "It looks fabulous, it uses special effects to create a new world of its own, but it is thin in its human story." This seems a strange complaint, given that so much of the movie concerns who is, and is not, human, and what it means to be human anyway. Now study that paragraph again and notice I have committed a journalistic misdemeanor. I have referred to replicants without ever establishing what a replicant is. It is a tribute to the influence and reach of "Blade Runner" that 25 years after its release virtually everyone reading this knows about replicants. Reviews of "The Wizard of Oz" never define Munchkins, do they? This is a seminal film, building on older classics like "Metropolis" (1926) or "Things to Come," but establishing a pervasive view of the future that has influenced science fiction films ever since. Its key legacies are: Giant global corporations, environmental decay, overcrowding, technological progress at the top, poverty or slavery at the bottom -- and, curiously, almost always a film noir vision. Look at "Dark City," "Total Recall," "Brazil," "12 Monkeys" or "Gattaca" and you will see its progeny. I have never quite embraced "Blade Runner," admiring it at arm's length, but now it is time to cave in and admit it to the canon."

"What I have always wondered is why the Tyrell Corporation made their androids so lifelike. Why not give them four arms and settle the matter, and get more work out of them? Is there a buried possibility that Tyrell's long-range plan is to replace humans altogether? Is the whole blade-running caper simply a cover for his scheme? But never mind. What matters to the viewer is that the ground rules seem to be in place, and apply in one of the most extraordinary worlds ever created in a film."