'Blade Runner': plot summary

This is a plot summary of director Ridley Scott's film 'Blade Runner'

Blade Runner is a dystopian Neo Noir science fiction thriller set in the city of Los Angeles in the year 2019 concerning 4 bioengineered humans called replicants who escape an off-world slave colony and return to Earth to find their Maker—the Tyrell Corporation. The Tyrell Corporation manufactures genetically engineered slaves for dangerous and menial work on off world colonies. Replicants are banned on Earth and if discovered are retired by special police units called Blade Runners. The story begins in an interrogation room at the Tyrell complex. The 4 fugitive replicants are suspected of breaking into Tyrell and a new employee named Leon is being interrogated. A Blade Runner named Holden subjects Leon (Brion James) to the Voigt-Kampff test, a test designed to distinguish replicants from humans based on certain physiological responses to a series of cross-referenced questions. Holden asks Leon a question about his mother and Leon shoots Holden with a gun underneath the table. 

Chinatown is under a steady downpour. Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford), a retired Blade Runner, is enjoying a bowl of noodles at a stand when he receives a tap on the shoulder from a fellow Blade Runner named Gaff (Edward James Olmos) who detains him and takes him to police headquarters. There, Captain Bryant (M. Emmet Walsh) brings Deckard out of retirement to hunt down 4 ‘skin-jobs’ (replicants) that have escaped an off-world labor camp. The replicants are a new generation called Nexus 6 that are indistinguishable from humans except that they lack human emotions which they develop after 6 years. For this reason, Tyrell engineered the Nexus 6 model to only live for 4 years. The fugitives’ leader is Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer), a blonde, male combat model, incept date 2016. The other fugitives are a female assassin named Zhora (Joanna Cassidy) and a ‘pleasure model’ named Pris (Daryl Hannah), incept dates also 2016. Captain Bryant sends Deckard to Tyrell to do a Voigt-Kampff empathy test on a replicant there named Rachel.

At Tyrell, Rachel passes the Voigt-Kampff, however it takes Deckard more than 100 questions to detect her as being a replicant; ordinarily, it only takes 20 questions to spot a replicant. After the test, Rachel shows up at Decker’s apartment and he breaks it to her that she is a replicant and that all of her memories are false memories implanted in her brain by Tyrell. 

Meanwhile, Roy Batty and Leon visit an eye engineer named Chew at Eye World. Roy wants to know his incept date and Chew tells him to go see J.F. Sebastian who also works for Tyrell. 

Deckard and Gaff search Leon’s hotel room and Deckard finds a stack of photographs that leads him to Zhora who is working as a stripper. Deckard pretends to be with the Committee on Moral Abuses to gain access to her dressing room but she is not fooled and flees with him in pursuit. He shoots her and she dies. Later, Bryant congratulates him and lets him know that he only has 4 more replicants to hunt down, the 3 fugitives plus Rachel who has escaped from Tyrell upon finding out the she is a replicant. 

Now, things become complicated for Deckard. Leon appears out of nowhere. Deckard draws his gun but Leon slaps it away. Rachel picks up Decker’s gun and shoots Leon in the head. Deckard takes Rachel to his place and promises not to kill her for saving his life. She asks him if he saw her incept date at Tyrell but he doesn't say. He pours himself a drink and falls asleep. Later, he is awakened by Rachel who is playing the piano. Her hair which she kept up is down along her shoulders. He kisses her but she is afraid and runs away. He corners her and forces her to confront the new sensations welling up in her. He kisses her and she finally gives in. 

J.F. Sebastian lives alone in a dilapidated hotel called the Bradbury. His apartment is full of genetically engineered humans he refers to as “toys.” He’s only in his 20’s but he looks very old because he suffers from the Methuselah Syndrome which causes him to age at an accelerated rate. He finds Pris, the pleasure model, in a pile of garbage and takes her in. And later, Roy Batty shows up. He tells Pris that they are the only 2 left; the other replicants who escaped the slave camp are dead. They manipulate Sebastian to take them to see Eldon Tyrell. 

There, Roy asks Tyrell for more life but the coding sequence cannot be altered once it is set. Tyrell consoles Roy with praise--he is the best replicant the corporation’s ever produced. Tyrell goes on to say: “The light that burns the brightest, burns half as long.” But these words mean nothing to Roy. He kisses Tyrell then kills him. Afterwards, Roy kills J.F. Sebastian and leaves the Tyrell Corporation. 

Back at J.F. Sebastian’s apartment, Deckard enters a room full of life-sized dolls. Pris blends in with these dolls and attacks Deckard. He manages to get his gun and shoots her. Roy returns to Sebastian’s apartment to find Pris dead. He torments Deckard, running through the rooms, ducking in and out of doorways, and howling like a wolf. Deckard climbs out of a window and pulls himself up to the roof of the building. Batty is already there, however, and Deckard attempts to leap across to an adjacent building. He barely makes it and struggles to pull himself up. Roy leaps to the other easily and pulls Deckard up with 1 hand. Roy then sits down and his shoulders slump. He says his last words: 

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shore of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those moments will be lost, like tears in the rain.”

He dies. Deckard rushes back to his apartment where Rachel is asleep in his bed. He wakes her and they rush out of the apartment. In the hall, he happens to look down and sees a tiny origami, the same unicorn he saw in his dreams. Gaff left it there. Deckard and Rachel flee; now, they are both fugitives.