I just returned from a sneak preview of Brian DePalma's Redacted, and I feel compelled to warn people not to drop $12 on this film when it opens later this month, for it is one mediocre war movie.

A coverage/review round-up of the sci-fi masterpiece by director Ridley Scott, first released in 2002, a pseudo-director's (but still good!) cut in 1992 and now the "final cut," which has opened for a limited run in Toronto at the Regent Theatre.

The Star's Peter Howell gives the latest version four stars.

Jason Anderson, writing in the Globe and Mail, doesn't give it a rating but insists this latest version shows that Harrison Ford's character, the Blade Runner Rick Deckard, is a replicant himself (if you don't know, don't ask).*

* Ridley Scott says Deckard is a replicant.

At Cinematical, Ryan Stewart argues why he thinks the film does paint Deckard as a replicant, and he doesn't like it.

The argument for? He drifts off in a drunken reverie and thinks of a unicorn loping through a forest. At the very end of the movie, he finds a unicorn origami -- which proves They implanted his memories, which means he's a replicant. 

I say he's not. Look at his eyes (windows to the soul, and all that). The eyes of the replicants are substantially different than those of the humans in the film (see the photo at right for an example). Deckard has human eyes*. The eyes are very important in this film -- replicants are identified in part by monitoring their eye responses to questions; the "'I designed you eyes!'-'If only you could see what I've seen with your eyes'" sequence; and the fact that the replicants' creator died by having his skull cracked and thumbs pushed deep into his eye sockets.

* For the most part; I did see one scene where he did have the replicant eyes thing going on.

Note the following from Wikipedia:

Paul Sammon, author of Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner, has suggested in interviews that Deckard may be a Nexus-7, a next-generation replicant who possesses no superhuman strength or intelligence, but brain implants that complete the human illusion. Sammon also suggests that Nexus-7 replicants may not have a preset lifespan (i.e., they could be immortal).

Here's a question: What if Deckard is such an advanced replicant that he's essentially human? In any event, a rhetorical question. I hold that Deckard was a human character. However, since the whole film is about what it means to be human, some ambiguity in this matter isn't a bad thing.

Moving on.

At his usual perch in Eye Weekly, Anderson gave it four stars.

The National Post's Vanessa Farquharson gave it only two stars, but gets some stuff wrong. For example:

 And the dialogue can get ridiculously melodramatic at times, like when one character comments of a replicant, "It's too bad he won't live? but then again, who does?"

Actually, the "he" was a she -- Rachel, Sean Young's character and Deckard's love interest.

The "confessional in the pouring rain by a Billy Idol look-alike carrying a dove in one hand" is a reference to Rutger Hauer's character Roy Batty. But in her rush to dismiss, Farquharson doesn't mention that this genetically engineered killing machine made saving Deckard one of the last acts of his life. An act of humanity, in other words, after a short, hellish existence of violence and enslavement. In Batty's final moments before dying, he begins by telling a stunned Deckard, "I've ... seen things you people wouldn't believe." A dove is a sign of peace.*

* In earlier versions, the dove flies up to one of the few patches of blue sky one sees in the movie. In the final cut, there is light cloud. Whatever could it mean? :) 

Not a perceptive review by Ms. Farquharson.

For me, an annoyance in this version is when Roy tells his creator, Emmett Tyrell, "I want more life, father."

Personally, I liked the snarly, original "I want more life -- fucker."

That declaration captures the urgent yearning for life and dignity, the unextinguishable fire of the human spirit -- even in someone that humans consider a non-human -- that continues to make this film a classic.