Character Analysis
Dude Looks like a Replicant
Rick Deckard is the movie's protagonist, but he's kind of a puzzling guy—more so than many of the other characters. Yeah, it seems like he's the hero, but his job as a blade runner is to kill replicants, who are essentially runaway slaves. He may kill them reluctantly but he kills them nonetheless.
Deckard also embodies some of the clichés of the film noir detective: he's a moody dude who likes to drink. He's kind of a loner, and he doesn't get close to people. The voiceover in the original cut of the movie helped fortify this image.
But Deckard is a little deeper than that, too: he starts to fall in love with a replicant, Rachael, and he's deeply ambivalent about his job. In fact, Deckard himself might be a replicant (at least, according to certain versions of the film—but more on that soon). When speaking to Rachael earlier in the movie, Deckard expresses his views on replicants:
"Replicants are like any other machine. They're either a benefit or a hazard. If they're a benefit, it's not my problem."
But if they're not a benefit, Deckard will track them down and kill them.
Essentially, at the beginning of the movie, that's how Deckard views the replicants: as tools and machines, just as the Tyrell Corporation intends them to be viewed. Even though he's been trying to get out of his career as a blade runner, he doesn't fight against his new assignment after it's set. He's willing to hunt down the rogue replicants who've escaped from the Off-World colonies. But as the movie progresses, his opinions start to shift.
Unicorns on His Mind
The big shift for Deckard comes when he meets Rachael, a replicant with a particularly enhanced degree of humanity. When he gives her a Voight-Kampff test, which is designed to identify replicants, it takes far longer than usual to out her—and she herself is unaware of her replicant status. This is because Dr. Tyrell has given her false memories culled from the mind of his niece.
At one point, Deckard tries to disillusion Rachael, though as soon as he does, he feels bad about it:
"They're implants. Those aren't your memories, they're somebody else's. They're Tyrell's niece's. Okay, bad joke, I'm sorry... No, really, I made a bad joke. Go home, you're not a Replicant... (sigh) you wanna drink? I'll get you a drink."
But this is where things start to get weird for Deckard. After seeing the fake family pictures that Rachael has, which remind her of her nonexistent past, Deckard sits by the piano in his apartment, drinking, surrounded by old family photos. Suddenly (in the "Director's Cut" and the "Final Cut"), a weird, brief dream sequence ensues: Deckard sees a unicorn running through a forest.
Later, Gaff, another blade runner, leaves a silver origami unicorn in Deckard's apartment—indicating that Gaff knows the content of Deckard's dreams… which suggests that these dreams might actually be implants, and Deckard might be a replicant himself. This would mean that his family photos are the same as Rachael's—fakes. So, perhaps, when Deckard is sitting by the piano with the photos, he might actually be pondering his own identity, wondering if he's a replicant, too.
What's the difference, actually, between a replicant and a human? Memories? Identity? The capacity for empathy? What?
To Forgive Is Divine
Nonetheless, Deckard continues hunting and killing replicants. He tracks down Zhora and kills her in a violent sequence, blowing her away as she crashes through a storefront's windows. He runs into Leon—although it's Rachael actually kills him—before fighting Pris and murdering her, too. Yet, in his final confrontation with Roy, Deckard finds himself outmatched. Fortunately, grace descends, and Roy spares Deckard's life. He's able to run away with Rachael at the end, since the other blade runner, Gaff, has decided not to kill her, allowing her to run away with Deck (apparently).
But wait—isn't the Voight-Kampff test designed to tell the difference between humans and replicants based on the capacity of each for empathy? The idea is that replicants don't have it, but humans do—and yet we've just seen Roy feel empathy for Deckard. So what's the difference, really?
Does Deckard himself recognize the fundamental humanity of the replicants? Does he have any sense of his own identity? With the lead replicant, Roy, we get the sense that he's reached some great epiphany at the end of his life—he's lived more intensely than most actual humans and has earned the right to be called a human by his final compassionate act.
Deckard functions as a witness to this, and it seems to change him, too, though it's more of an implicit thing. Roy's forgiveness leaves him free to go live with Rachael and start a life somewhere outside the movie's hellish version of L.A. Maybe.
Deckard's Timeline