Flying Cars Are Here!

Rating: 9/10 (7 August 2018)

Blade Runner 2049: Flying cars, lots of flying cars. Flying in formation; crashing through windows; crash-landing after being shot with an Emp enabled harpoon; involved in dogfights; sinking in the sea; providing an arena for fights to the death. Yes! The Flying Cars are here! If anything we have an even darker, gloomier setting for this sequel. There are snowstorms in LA, there are sandstorms. Traditional farming has largely collapsed, replaced by Synthetic Farms introduced by the Great Saviour Nilander Wallace (Jared Leto) who has also acquired the remains of Tyrell Corporation.
The film opens with Blade Runner K (Ryan Gosling) tracking down a replicant on a farm, a Nexus 8 model which has an open ended life span. The replicant has been hiding out there for 30 years. As he terminates the farmer we learn that K is himself a replicant. A new, obedient model which is subjected to regular loyalty tests. K faces prejudice from other police officers, at home he has a holographic wife, Joi (Ana de Armas). He also encounters a pleasure replicant, Mariette (MacKenzie Davis).
The remains of another long dead replicant are located on the farm and they point to a biological mystery which causes K's boss (Robin Wright) to send him on a quest. This will takes him from LA to a largely abandoned and ruinous San Diego and from there to a radioactive Las Vegas where her encounters Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) and engages in a fistfight with him as holograms of Elvis and Liberace perform in the background. But Wallace's killer replicant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is on a similar quest.
An SF thriller which lives up to the magic of the original but leaves some question tantalisingly unanswered. 9/10.