Blade Runner (1982)

The view of the future offered by Ridley Scott's muddled yet mesmerizing ''Blade Runner'' is as intricately detailed as anything a science-fiction film has yet envisioned. The year is 2019, the place Los Angeles, the landscape garish but bleak. The city is a canyon bounded by industrial towers, some of which belch fire. Advertising billboards, which are everywhere, now feature lifelike electronic people who are the size of giants. The police cruise both horizontally and vertically on their patrol routes, but there is seldom anyone to arrest, because the place is much emptier than it used to be. In an age of space travel, anyone with the wherewithal has presumably gone away. Only the dregs remain.

''Blade Runner'' begins with a stunning shot of this futuristic city, accompanied by the rumbling of Vangelis's eerie, highly effective score. It proceeds to tell the story of Rick Deckard and his battle with the replicants, a story based on Philip K. Dick's novel ''Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?'' In brief: replicants are manmade creatures that possess all human attributes except feelings. They have been built to serve as slaves in Earth colonies that are Off World, i.e., elsewhere. Whenever the replicants rebel, the job of eliminating them is given to a special, skilled hunter. This expert is called a blade runner.

Rick Deckard is the best of the blade runners, now retired. He is as hard-boiled as any film noir detective, with much the same world view. So when he is told, at the beginning of ''Blade Runner,'' that an especially dangerous group of replicants is on the loose, and is offered the job of hunting them, he can't say no. Even in the murkiest reaches of science-fiction lore, a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do.

''Blade Runner,'' which opens today at the Criterion Center and other theaters, follows Deckard's love affair with a beautiful replicant named Rachael, who is special assistant to the high-level industrialist who created her. It also follows Deckard's tracking down of the runaways, most notably their white-haired, demoniclooking leader, Batty (Rutger Hauer). These events involve quite a bit of plot, but they're nothing in the movie's excessively busy overall scheme. ''Blade Runner'' is crammed to the gills with much more information than it can hold.

Science-fiction devotees may find ''Blade Runner'' a wonderfully meticulous movie and marvel at the comprehensiveness of its vision. Even those without a taste for gadgetry cannot fail to appreciate the degree of effort that has gone into constructing a film so ambitious and idiosyncratic. The special effects are by Douglas Trumbull, Richard Yuricich and David Dryer, and they are superb. So is Laurence G. Paull's production design. But ''Blade Runner'' is a film that special effects could have easily run away with, and run away with it they have.

And it's also a mess, at least as far as its narrative is concerned. Almost nothing is explained coherently, and the plot has great lapses, from the changeable nature of one key character to the frequent disappearances of another. The story lurches along awkwardly, helped not at all by some ponderous stabs at developing Deckard's character. As an old-fashioned detective cruising his way through the space age, Deckard is both tedious and outre.

At several points in the story, Deckard is called on to wonder whether Rachael has feelings. This seems peculiar, because the icy, poised Rachael, played by Sean Young as a 1940's heroine with spaceage trimmings, seems a lot more expressive than Deckard, who is played by Harrison Ford. Mr. Ford is, for a movie so darkly fanciful, rather a colorless hero; he fades too easily into the bleak background. And he is often upstaged by Rutger Hauer, who in this film and in ''Night Hawks'' appears to be specializing in fiendish roles. Mr. Hauer is properly cold-blooded here, but there is something almost humorous behind his nastiness. In any case, he is by far the most animated performer in a film intentionally populated by automatons.

Mr. Scott, who made his mark in ''Alien'' by showing a creature bursting forth from the body of one of its victims, tries hard to hit the same note here. One scene takes place in an eyeball factory. Two others show Deckard in vicious, sadistic fights with women. One of these fights features strange calisthenics and unearthly shrieks.

The end of the film is both gruesome and sentimental. Mr. Scott can't have it both ways, any more than he can expect overdecoration to carry a film that has neither strong characters nor a strong story. That hasn't stopped him from trying, even if it perhaps should have.

The Matrix (1999)

Action heroes speak volumes about the couch-potato audiences that they thrill. So it's understandable that ''The Matrix,'' a furious special-effects tornado directed by the imaginative brothers Andy and Larry Wachowski (''Bound''), couldn't care less about the spies, cowboys and Rambos of times gone by. Aiming their film squarely at a generation bred on comics and computers, the Wachowskis stylishly envision the ultimate in cyberescapism, creating a movie that captures the duality of life a la laptop. Though the wildest exploits befall this film's sleek hero, most of its reality is so virtual that characters spend long spells of time lying stock still with their eyes closed.

In a film that's as likely to transfix fans of computer gamesmanship as to baffle anyone with quaintly humanistic notions of life on earth, the Wachowskis have synthesized a savvy visual vocabulary (thanks especially to Bill Pope's inspired techno-cinematography), a wild hodgepodge of classical references (from the biblical to Lewis Carroll) and a situation that calls for a lot of explaining.

The most salient things any prospective viewer need know is that Keanu Reeves makes a strikingly chic Prada model of an action hero, that the martial arts dynamics are phenomenal (thanks to Peter Pan-type wires for flying and inventive slow-motion tricks), and that anyone bored with the notably pretentious plotting can keep busy toting up this film's debts to other futuristic science fiction. Neat tricks here echo ''Terminator'' and ''Alien'' films, ''The X-Files,'' ''Men in Black'' and ''Strange Days,'' with a strong whiff of ''2001: A Space Odyssey'' in the battle royale being waged between man and computer. Nonetheless whatever recycling the brothers do here is canny enough to give ''The Matrix'' a strong identity of its own.

Mr. Reeves plays a late-20th-century computer hacker whose terminal begins telling him one fateful day that he may have some sort of messianic function in deciding the fate of the world. And what that function may be is so complicated that it takes the film the better part of an hour to explain. Dubbed Neo (in a film whose similarly portentous character names include Morpheus and Trinity, with a time-traveling vehicle called Nebuchadnezzar), the hacker is gradually made to understand that everything he imagines to be real is actually the handiwork of 21st-century computers. These computers have subverted human beings into batterylike energy sources confined to pods, and they can be stopped only by a savior modestly known as the One.

We know even before Neo does that his role in saving the human race will be a biggie. (But on the evidence of Mr. Reeves's beautiful, equally androgynous co-star, Carrie-Anne Moss in Helmut Newton cat-woman mode, propagating in the future looks to be all business.) The film happily leads him through varying states of awareness, much of it explained by Laurence Fishburne in the film's philosophical-mentor role. Mr. Fishburne's Morpheus does what he can to explain how the villain of a film can be ''a neural interactive simulation'' and that the Matrix is everywhere, enforced by sinister morphing figures in suits and sunglasses. ''The Matrix'' is the kind of film in which sunglasses are an integral part of sleekly staged fight scenes.

With enough visual bravado to sustain a steady element of surprise (even when the film's most important Oracle turns out to be a grandmotherly type who bakes cookies and has magnets on her refrigerator), ''The Matrix'' makes particular virtues out of eerily inhuman lighting effects, lightning-fast virtual scene changes (as when Neo wishes for guns and thousands of them suddenly appear) and the martial arts stunts that are its single strongest selling point. As supervised by Yuen Wo Ping, these airborne sequences bring Hong Kong action style home to audiences in a mainstream American adventure with big prospects as a cult classic and with the future very much in mind.

Upgrade (2018)

"Upgrade," an irresistibly gory science-fiction melodrama, is B-movie schlock done right. The film follows pseudo-everyman mechanic Grey Trace (Logan Marshall-Green) whose body and wife are destroyed by upwardly mobile cyborgs with a God complex (no, really). From this plot synopsis, you might think that writer/director Leigh Whannell has a lot to say about man's relationship with technology. You'd be wrong since Whannell (writer/co-creator of "Insidious" and "Saw") doesn't have the patience to develop any of his film's bigger ideas about how modern technology uses its creators more than we use it.

Thankfully, viewers with a hearty stomach and a taste for blood will be delighted to learn that Whannell delivers other things in abundance, like sickening violence, a Dr. Frankenstein-like computer scientist, a bar that's decorated with as many bones (human and animal) as Leatherface's den in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre 2," and a mystery sub-plot whose clues are all instantly ferreted out by "Stem" (Simon Maiden), a devil-on-your-shoulder version of KITT from "Knight Rider" who lives inside Grey's post-accident head. You'll have a good time with "Upgrade" if you don't take Whannell's half-baked ideas or unabashed blood-lust too seriously.

"Upgrade" begins by tacking on a scifi gloss to an otherwise paint-by-numbers revenge story. Grey and his wife Asha (Melanie Vellajo) are ambushed by the above-mentioned cyborgs while their self-driving car delivers them to their seemingly fully computerized home. Grey and Asha's car is hacked and destroyed during an unexpected stopover in the poverty row suburb where Grey grew up (he and Asha don't notice something's up because they're too busy making out in the backseat). But Grey's house is just as plush and stylistically confusing as the pseudo-basic man cave that their car is driving them away from: the subterranean lair of pouty super-scientist Eron (Harrison Gilbertson), whose futuristic man-cave's foundation is built out of concrete, granite, wood and glass, but is also filled with the same softly-hissing automated doors, voice-command-activated appliances, and touch-screen table-tops as Grey and Asha's house. The rich do live differently in "Upgrade," but Grey is tentatively identified as an outsider since he works with his hands and has a manly, face-assimilating beard that reduces his facial expressions to a gaping mouth and bulging Muppet-sized eyes.

Grey's superficial man-of-the-people vibe ingratiates him to Eron, a creepy loner genius whose vibe is essentially "the soul of Colin Clive in 'Frankenstein' but in the body of a bad James Dean lookalike." So Eron offers to help Grey after evil cyborgs kill Asha (not a spoiler, it happens early on!) and turn Grey into a quadriplegic: Eron will implant a radical computer chip named Stem inside his Grey's body, thereby helping the crippled mechanic regain control over his body's basic motor functions. Unfortunately for Grey, Eron doesn't immediately describe some of Stem's key features, including his sentience--Stem talks to Grey with a dispassionate robo-voice, like HAL 9000's low-budget under-study, HAL 350--and his ability to commandeer and even boost Grey's control over his body--whenever Grey gives Stem permission to do so. Stem naturally uses these super-human abilities to help Grey find his wife's killers.

It's tempting to compare Grey to RoboCop--another amoral killing machine struggling for his mortal soul--but Grey's personality isn't submerged inside his body the way that Peter Weller's hapless ghost in the machine was in Paul Verhoeven's satirical 1987 bloodbath. Grey actively encourages Stem to do whatever he needs to in order to first protect their shared body, and then further his own vengeance-fueled investigation. Any pretensions of humanistic cyber-commentary that Whannell and his film may have are undermined by the scene where Grey commands Stem to use his body to disarm a group of pub-dwelling thugs after they drag Grey into a bullet-case-and-urine-littered bathroom. Grey gives Stem the go-ahead to mercilessly cut up one thug's face off-camera. Grey also tells Stem to stop twice, but he doesn't object too strenuously once Stem's victim gives Grey whatever answers he desires. If you take this scene seriously, you might conclude that Whannell thinks that technology has finally proven what the military could not: torture is good because it's effective! Your suspicion would only be further proven correct by the way that Grey never pauses to reflect on his penchant for remorse-less robo-enhanced murder.

But again: "Upgrade" is not that kind of picture, nor does it need to be. Whannell's mashup of a man-vs.-technology narrative with a revenge-fueled whodunit is as fun as it is because its chase scenes involve sadistic, artificially intelligent computers, nanotech bacteria, and Cronenberg-like hand-guns (ie: there are literally guns in some people's hands). Marshall-Green sails across the screen, doing somersaults, karate parries, and even Michael Jackson's 45-degree-angle lean while he cleaves baddies' jaws in two and/or shoots their brains out. And through it all, murder-mystery clues are doled out with reckless abandon while supporting characters--like Grey's mom (Linda Cropper) and the suspicious detective (Betty Gabriel) assigned to his wife's case--come and go without much rhyme or reason. The key to enjoying "Upgrade" is relishing its over-the-top characterizations, plot twists, and cheesiness. "Upgrade" may not be a capital-G Good film, but it can be a very enjoyable one.

Elysium (2013)

In a summer of antiseptic effects spectacles, "Elysium" stands out for its grime and intensity, as well as the bluntness of its class allegory. The movie won't win many points for originality or logic. But when the blockbuster competition wants only new ways to repackage Wolverine and Superman, it's weirdly refreshing to watch a film that seeks new ways to repackage "Mad Max," "Blade Runner," "Robocop," and elements from Kathryn Bigelow and David Cronenberg.

The film is set in 2154, when the planet has been ravaged by disease, pollution, and overpopulation. The wealthiest now live on a space station called Elysium, which can be seen in the clouds from Earth below. Max (Matt Damon) has grown up watching Elysium from his rundown, largely Latino L.A. neighborhood. A reformed car thief now working in a grueling factory job-he's lucky to have it, he's sneeringly informed-Max is trying to keep things together in a society openly rigged against the poor.

It's not easy. Amid a gritty cityscape filled with cluttered streets and dirty, crowded hospitals, a robot police force makes arrests indiscriminately, with no apparent restraints on brutality. Sentencing is automated, administered by a droid whose voice has the kind of crackle you hear when ordering at a drive-thru. No sooner is Max done with his latest legal entanglement than a radiation accident at the plant leaves him with only days to live. He's done for-unless he can get to Elysium, where healing pods fix all medical problems in seconds.

On this space "habitat," we follow the defense secretary (Jodie Foster), who offers a vigorous defense of her right to use unlimited force to benefit the liberty of a few. In a not-so-subtle commentary on the immigration debate, she shoots down refugees who try to land. She's also plotting a coup with the help of a wormy CEO (William Fichtner) on Earth. Max's attempt to track down the latter man and download information from his brain-echoes of "Strange Days"-makes for one of the film's most excitingly absurd sequences, as the hero and his former auto-thief partner (Diego Luna) intercept this bigwig's crashing private jet.

Drawing on an international cast, "Elysium" is rich with topical allusions. Writer-director Neill Blomkamp's "District 9" (2009) was a naked Apartheid allegory, and there's a continuation of that thread here. (It's surely no accident that Foster character, while variously parroting Cheney and Goldwater, speaks with a South African accent.) "Elysium" also nods to the healthcare fight and the growing income gap, so it's a disappointment that the film ultimately doesn't have much cogent to say-beyond having a child make the observation that helping people is a good way to make friends.

Still, although it lacks the full conceptual punch of "District 9," "Elysium" is less erratic as filmmaking. (There's no mock-documentary conceit to abandon this time.) For a villain, it offers not only Foster's character, but Sharlto Copley as her vicious felon henchman, as volatile and cruel a presence as we've seen on screen in some time. When he interrogates Max's childhood friend, now a nurse (Alice Braga) with a daughter (Emma Tremblay) dying of leukemia, he momentarily feigns sympathy: "I don't believe in committing violent acts in front of kids," he taunts, leaving viewers bracing for the worst.

"Elysium" is involving enough that it's tempting to forgive its numerous logical flaws, but much of what happens doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Let's start with the medical pods. The film is vague about how numerous they are, and their healing powers barely stop short of resurrection. That seems less like a plausible vision of the future and more like a screenwriter's contrivance for keeping favorite characters alive.

And while it's noble for Max and black-market dealer Spider (Wagner Moura) to want to grant Elysian citizenship and healthcare to every person on Earth, the movie makes no attempt to address the scarcity issue that's allegedly given rise to this dystopia in the first place. By limiting the Earth-bound action to Los Angeles, the film leaves questions dangling about the rest of the world while at the same time squandering an opportunity for imagination.

Class disparity is one of the oldest archetypes in sci-fi movies, dating from "Metropolis" at least, and idea-wise, "Elysium" doesn't hold its own even by recent standards of the subgenre. (Check out on Andrew Niccol's underrated "In Time," in which the haves and have-nots use the minutes they have to live as currency.) But as a vehicle for putting Matt Damon in a bionic getup on a messianic action quest, "Elysium" has enough grist to power through.