What's in a title: Blade Runner

Blade Runner (1982)

In a dystopian Los Angeles of 2019, special police officers known as Blade Runners are tasked with killing renegade "replicants," artificial humans virtually indistinguishable from the real thing. Blade Runners need to recognize razor-thin distinctions between what is human and what is not; an error in judgement could mean the death of a real human. Because these decisions often need to be made quickly, before the sometimes-dangerous replicants can cause any harm, there is a narrow window of opportunity and little room for error. These officers, therefore, must metaphorically run along the "razor's edge," the edge of a blade.