Blade Runner - The Director's Cut

There are some sci-fi movies that just seem to get better with time, and then when the director is able to release their movie in the style that they wanted it just steps up another notch. When Warner Bros. released this movie on DVD it gave Ridley Scott the opportunity to change some of the things that were bothering him about the way the film looked. The three major things that were changed were: 1) the happy ending was taken out, 2) Harrison Ford's voice over narration was removed, and 3) a dream sequence was injected to give the Deckard character the look that he may not be what he seems.
When a group of replicants come to Earth on a murderous rampage, Rick Deckard, a professional Blade Runner, is given the assignment to track them down and kill them. The action sequences that are throughout the film are very well done and they help give you the feel of that this is a sci-fi suspense story. The sets that are used are completely believable as a future Los Angeles and with the little bits of advanced technology; you have the feeling that this could be the future that is right around the corner. The two stand out actors here are Harrison Ford and Rutger Hauer, both do a wonderful job as the good and evil characters, but as the story progresses you just don't how evil Hauer's character really is.
This film rightly deserves the description of masterpiece, and with the changes that Scott did for this cut make it almost a completely different movie. Even though this story is set in the not to distant future, it doesn't take away the human side of the characters and they seem more modern then most. I've seen this movie repeatedly over the years and just never get tired of it, and with the changes that have been made I now have an alternate movie to watch depending on my mood.
When they re-released this film in a DVD box set, the set included four versions of this tour de force, the 1982 original, the 1982 international release, the director's cut and then a final cut, with new footage and special effects. This is the kind of movie watching that true fans get into, they are given the oppertunity to see all of the versions available and choose which one they want to watch. It's a shame that more film companies don't offer box sets in this fashion, they would find that more often than not there is an audience out that would truely love to watch films the way they want to see them.