Harrison Ford turned 80 this July. If he is getting old, everyone is out to feel a lot older. Part of Ford’s appeal onscreen was due to his natural talent for appearing a bit cooler, slyer, and savvier than anyone else around him. So, maybe he was always a bit older than anyone else from the insides. Nevertheless, he’s never been disappointed in the films and roles he has taken since his breakthrough with American Graffiti and The Conversation (even those minor parts are masterpieces). He can claim three of the most iconic roles in cinema history. Following are his greatest, most timeless performances that you can revisit.
Image Courtesy: IMDb
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1982 Blade Runner
Director: Ridley Scott
Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, M Emmet Walsh, Edward James Olmos, Sean Young
Genre: Scifi-Action-Drama
This sci-fi/action movie stars Harrison Ford as Rick Deckard. He is a bounty hunter assigned to eliminate four escaped Replicants. Blade Runner, based on the short story by Philip K. Dick, is one of those films that spark thousands of conversations and theories. Who is more human when the replicants show more human emotions than their human creators? People still wonder about the unanswered question: Is Rick Deckard a replicant?
What’s more interesting is that director Ridley Scott and actor Harrison Ford disagreed on the issue, each taking a different stance. While the answer may be ambiguous, it simply speaks of Ford’s acting ability. His character’s background wasn’t clear-cut, but he still delivered a strong performance.
Image Courtesy: BFI
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1977 Star Wars: Ep IV-A New Hope
Director: George Lucas
Starring: Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Daryl Hannah, M Emmet Walsh, Edward James Olmos, Sean Young
Genre: Action-Fantasy-Adventure
Harrison Ford wowed audiences with his breakout, endearing performance as Han Solo in the Star Wars films. Ford transformed Solo from a cynical outcast to the galaxy’s hero, making him likable and relatable. We all secretly admired him as the bad boy. In addition to some of the funniest lines in the Star Wars franchise, Solo is the film’s heartthrob. His chemistry with Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia will go down in cinema history as one of the best onscreen romances. Harrison himself said, “I think you just can’t bear to let a gorgeous guy like me out of your sight.”
Image Courtesy: Critical Popcorn
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1981 Indiana Jones-Raiders of the Lost Ark
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Ronald Lacey, Paul Freeman, Denholm Elliott, John Rhys-Davies
Genre: Action- Adventure
Indiana Jones (Ford) has a pretty glamorous job—he’s a treasure hunter. While he tells his students that his job is mostly mindless tedium, we see him traveling to exotic locations in search of valuable artifacts, dodging serpents and Nazis, and still finding time to romance a female hostage. It truly makes archaeology appear to be the best job in the world.
Image Courtesy: TImeout
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1985 Witness
Director: Peter Weir
Starring: Harrison Ford, Josef Sommer, Lukas Haas, Kelly McGillis, Jan Rubes, Danny Glover, Alexander Godunov
Genre: Drama-Thriller-Romance
While Harrison Ford did not win an Academy Award for his performance as John Book in the 1985 crime drama Witness, he was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Ford’s character in Witness is a police officer who protects an Amish mother and her son who saw a brutal murder. The trio escapes to the Amish countryside, where Book falls in love with the woman he is protecting. Furthermore, complications regarding the murder emerge quickly. The film has a high 93% Rotten Tomatoes rating and a solid audience rating (80%); its unique setting and plot set it apart. Ford and the great director Peter Weir bring incredible empathy to the film.
Image Courtesy: Roger Ebert
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1993 The Fugitive
Director: Peter Weir
Starring: Harrison Ford, Sela Ward, Tommy Lee Jones
Genre: Action-Drama-Crime
Harrison Ford plays Richard Kimble in The Fugitive, a man on the run from the law after being accused of murdering his wife. Kimble is now perplexed and at a loss as to who committed the crime, and he must piece everything together before the law catches up with him. The Fugitive is well-liked by both movie critics and audiences. It has received high marks on Rotten Tomatoes, scoring 96% among critics and 89% among audiences. Furthermore, it is described as “exhilarating and intense, this high-impact chase thriller is a taut and efficient formula filmmaking model, and it stars Harrison Ford at his frantic best.” Indeed, we see Ford bring pain and heartbreak to his character while trying to stay a step ahead of the law to solve the crime.
Image Courtesy: IMDb
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1980 Star Wars: Ep V The Empire Strikes Back
Director: Irvin Kershner
Starring: Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher
Genre: Action-Adventure-Fantasy
This second installment of the ‘Star Wars franchise, directed by Irvin Kershner, a former USC tutor of George Lucas, is the tautest – an extended ricochet from one incendiary set-piece battle to another that still finds time to attend to plot, pace, and character.
After the Rebel base on icy Hoth is destroyed, Han (Ford), Leia (Fisher), and others flee in the Millennium Falcon, eventually finding a dubious sanctuary in the city of Bespin. Meanwhile, Luke (Hamill) travels to the Degobah system to receive Jedi training from Yoda. In the final quarter, Luke rushes to Bespin to save his friends and confront Darth Vader, ignoring Yoda’s pleas to finish his training and risking his helpless conversion to the Dark Side.
Image Courtesy: Time Out
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1989 Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Alexei Sayle, Julian Glover, John Rhys-Davies, Sean Connery, Alison Doody, River Phoenix, Robert Eddison, Denholm Elliot, Michael Byrne
Genre: Action-Adventure
A film that has the mood and effects of Raiders of the Lost Ark, right down to a tank chase that drags Jones’ well-worn heels across the desert floor. The introduction of Connery, Medievalist professor, and Indiana’s father, saves us from total déjà vu. His screen persona serves as the ideal fatherly foil to the larger-than-life hero. Following a life-long obsession with the Holy Grail leads the professor into the clutches of evil Nazis, who, of course, want the same thing. Indiana Jones (Ford) comes to the aid of his father, the Holy Grail, and democracy itself. Rather than attempting to recreate the central romance of Raiders, the emotional core is served this time by Indiana and his father’s sparring relationship. Jeffrey Boam’s script dabbles with themes of negligence and reconciliation. Still, the duo’s near-death scrapes and lighthearted tussles over the same blonde Fräulein are anything but ponderous.
Image Courtesy: IMDb
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1997 Air Force One
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Starring: Harrison Ford, Glenn Close, Wendy Crewson, Gary Oldman, Paul Guilfoyle, Dean Stockwell, William H Macy, Jürgen Prochnow
Genre: Action-Thriller-Drama
American President James Marshall (Harrison Ford) swore never to negotiate with terrorists again at a diplomatic dinner in Moscow, Russia. But it’s a promise he may be unable to keep if Russian terrorists hijack the plane carrying President Marshall home. As terrorists threaten President Marshall’s wife and daughter, he must use his wits and veteran experience to save his family and everyone on board. While the special effects of the movie have aged poorly, Harrison Ford’s acting has stood the test of time. He demonstrates that a president can be a great leader while being bold and refusing to take nonsense from anyone.
Image Courtesy: IMDb
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1986 The Mosquito Coast
Director: Peter Weir
Starring: Harrison Ford, Conrad Roberts, Helen Mirren, André Gregory, River Phoenix, Dick O’Neill, Martha Plimpton
Genre: Adventure-Thriller-Drama
The Mosquito Coast is an adaptation of the novel with the same title by American author Paul Theroux. It follows the events of an American family uprooted from their lives to leave consumerism behind. They leave the United States and travel to the jungles of Central America in search of a simpler life and freedom from the modern world’s constraints. However, Allie Fox (Harrison Ford), the family’s father and head, soon goes too far and makes life a living hell for his family. Ford is playing a paranoid man seeking a “perfect life” and willing to take extreme measures to achieve it in this role. Unlike most of his characters, this one is disliked for a good reason. However, the end result is a strange and fascinating character study.
Image Courtesy: Jason’s Movie Blog
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2017 Blade Runner 2049
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Harrison Ford, Ryan Gosling, Jared Leto, Sylvia Hoeks, Ana de Armas, Robin Wright
Genre: Adventure-Mystery-Drama
It’s still raining in Los Angeles, and that same dark synth sounds swirl in ‘Blade Runner 2049,’ a massive piece of retro-futuristic gorgeousness set thirty years after the events of Ridley Scott’s Scott Blade Runner.’ With a run time of more than two and a half hours, the film impresses: at times, it’s an orgy of neon-colored street life; at others, it’s an existential thumbsucker that Andrei Tarkovsky from Russia would have been proud to sign. It’s always beholden to Scott’s stylishly downbeat vision, which he hatched back in 1982. ‘Blade Runner 2049’ is the year’s most anticipated sci-fi event.
Ryan Gosling stars as ‘K,’ a trenchcoat-clad hunter of errant replicants.’ Denis Villeneuve, director of films such as ‘Prisoners,’ ‘Sicario,’ and ‘Arrival,’ has brought an alien strangeness to the film’s intimate moments. This time, he injects soulfulness into a story that could have been lifeless. Instead, he’s dabbling in metaphysical concepts on a grand scale. The new ‘Blade Runner’ – human or replicant, it’s difficult to tell – is a strange hybrid worth cherishing. In the mist, there’s a unicorn.
