For me, most things about Blade Runner are great but Harrison Ford's performance is one of the film's weakest aspects.
Now I'm not saying I can imagine someone else in the role. I actually think Ford looks his best here, even better than Indy, with the cropped hair and the long raincoat but his performance is all over the shop.
There's parts where he's perfectly fine like when he's trying to escape from Batty and he's scared and exhausted, and when he returns home and he discovers Rachel is still alive but there's other parts where he leaves you scratching your head a bit.
He does his Han Solo lopsided smirk a few times throughout and I don't understand why when Deckard is not supposed to be cocksure but instead a bit broken and alchohol dependent. When he says to Rachel on the phone "I've had women walk out on me before, but never when I was being so charming" he looks and sounds as if he's just walked on set with an hangover and he doesn't know where he is. Then when Leon is throwing him around he does some awful "scared" expressions that are comically over the top.
It's well known that Ford could never really get an handle on Deckard. Partly because when he signed up to it he was expecting a more traditional detective type story and it's not really that at all. In fact, I would even argue that halfway through the film, Batty becomes more of the main focus of the film. And also he was used to collaborating with directors like Lucas and Spielberg, whereas Ridley was much more interested with every little detail of the visuals and he wasn't really "an actor's director". Certainly not then anyway. When you watch the Dangerous Days documentary you can really see Ford's frustration when you see some of the footage of him on set.
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