Blade Runner 2049

Film (2017)

With Ryan Gosling (‘K’), Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard), Dave Bautista (Sapper Morton), Robin Wright (Lieutenant Joshi), Mark Arnold (Interviewer), Ana de Armas (Joi), Wood Harris (Nandez), David Dastmalchian (Coco), Sylvia Hoeks (Luv), Edward James Olmos (Gaff), Jared Leto (Niander Wallace), Hiam Abbass (Freysa), Mackenzie Davis (Mariette)

Some class of cybernetic beings called replicants have gone haywire and give rise to a maverick class of law-enforcers – the blade runners – who chase them down and terminate them. Now, thirty-five years after the original, a new class of blade runner, itself a cybernetic variation and a better form of replicant, have been hired to chase down the old ones. But there’s more. It seems that magically some form of replicant has unwittingly replicated, a red flag for all those concerned. A long quest follows and the one who is born-again is not the one who seems obvious.

This is a long film. There is some stuff in here that’s beautifully done – the amazing cybernetic girlfriend of K (Ryan Gosling), the cybernetic blade runner, Joi (Ana de Armas), is full of pizzazz and dazzle. But overall the design and feel is a lot like that of Apocalypse Now – epic, dark, malevolent and full of insidious spirits with dangers everywhere. It’s kind of fun to see what the director and art director think LA will look like in thirty-two years, and one wishes there were more of that in detail rather than a lot of aerial scans.

Mostly, there’s a lot of waiting around. Things lumber along with an epic pretentiousness, as though the grave pace somehow brought with it significant cosmic appreciation. Ryan Gosling, who appears in almost every frame, is an interesting actor to watch, but he has so little to say that one mostly watches him and waits. This film has less dialogue per square minute than most, and there’s a constant roar of ominous background music to make sure that despite the lack of dialogue we are meant to feel deep things.

There is also a lot of mythology to get while one is navigating through the fields and fields of moodiness. What level of cyber-being is out and which one is in and how do the various humans relate? It’s all very mysterious, and one of the things that’s most mysterious is how vulnerable and human the cyber-beings are. They seem to bleed, though they can sew themselves up pretty quickly. But they too have a tilt function and seem to be able to be terminated.

Why having a baby seems like such a big deal in this cyber-universe is a real mystery – it seems that is actually the most realized version of cyber-life that we have already. So to make that the centerpiece of the script seems like an oddball choice. It does have echoes with a fairly central theme from The New Testament, but who’s counting? I don’t know if there is somebody counting the potential fans and how many would be attracted to that narrative, but the similarities did present themselves.

As well, there is a late dramatic scene that seems either taken from or built in tribute to another great cataclysmic epic, Titanic. I don’t know if that were intentional, but the device seems a little overused, even if one has to watch cyber-bodies contend with the abundant onset of water.

Harrison Ford (Rick Deckard), lo these many years later, shows up and gets underused. He’s moody, irritable, principled, and stuck in a Vegas empire with a loping dog. He is a loner, the guy who’s the head of the amazing corporation that seems to have control of the future of cyber-beings, Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), is also a loner, and despite his delightful imagistic girlfriend, K is pretty lonely too. Everyone lives in a bubble of one sort or another in this future necropolis and none of it looks too pretty. There is of course a budding revolutionary movement for the clones which we hear a little about while we amble from one brooding solitary character to another.

Some sci-fi buffs, and CGI fans in general, seem to like this kind of top-heavy stuff, which here goes on for 164 minutes. Ouch! As far as I’m concerned, Guardians of the Galaxy with it’s spicy and offhand dialogue and wink in the direction of the super-heroic moves things along much better, with a spirit of camaraderie and a universe that poses its challenges in a more comprehensible and entertaining way.

– BADMan