Excellent film. Go see it now!

Rating: 9/10 (6 October 2017)

Short form: Excellent film. Go see it now!
Long form: Excellent film. Go see it now! And here's why...
The film is exceptionally well done. The storyline is engaging and makes sense. The plot is cohesive, well thought out, and satisfying. The acting is first rate, compelling, and believable. The actors all played well their parts and were quite fulfilling and genuine in each of their roles.
The cinematography was truly stunning. The visuals were wonderfully composed, believable and yet compelling in showing how similar and different the world of 2049 is to ours today.
Denis Villeneuve, the director, has taken Ridley Scott's 1982 vision as his inspiration and basis from which to craft his own world building when creating this film. The look and feel of "Blade Runner 2049" is thus similar but unique when compared to Scott's "Blade Runner." In Villeneuve's rendering the world has clearly changed but has continued on the theme of being a blighted place where humanity's existence is still in question.
And Villeneuve goes even deeper in exploring that theme of what, exactly, it means to be human.
Whereas Scott's rendering could only touch on that theme, Villeneuve's makes it the central point. Yet he does so while not losing the audience in an endless amount of exposition or turning the film into a talking head exercise. Here, the actors do an excellent job of emoting the impact of what is going on as the story unfolds - as real people would do were that happening in the real world. That makes the film much more satisfying and engaging.
In the 1982 film, the studio executives decided that Scott's interpretation to Phillip Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" was too obscure in its story telling and insisted that there be a voice-over narration to explain it to the audience. Both Scott and Harrison Ford, who played the main character of Deckard, thought the idea of a narration was a travesty to the film and an insult to the audience. Contractually obligated, Ford - as he has since related - made sure to do his worst when called in to read the voice-over narration. And as Ford tells it, the studio execs chose Ford's worst recording as the one they pasted into the film.
I've seen "Bladerunner" both with the narration - when it first came out in theaters in 1982 - and the subsequent "director's cut" version where the narration was removed, and I really can't say which was better. Had I first taken the film in without its narration I might be able to say but that's not how it panned out.
For "Bladerunner 2049" however, the visual storytelling was well enough crafted and visually compelling enough that no narration was necessary. Gosling's acting, in particular, was spot on in this. In several key scenes, what was going on with the character - his emotions and his thoughts - was visually plain enough that voiced explanations would've lessened it.
The film runs long. Two hours and forty three minutes long. While the pace was not frenetic nor was it languid. There were no parts of the film that I found to drag or to have left me in confusion as to what had just happened because it blew by so quickly. Along the way Villeneuve does an excellent job of fleshing out the world he has brought to the screen by using the film's run time quite effectively.
Though offered in 3D I don't think the experience of seeing it in that version would be worth the added cost of doing so. The visuals aren't stunning based on their depth or on popping out at the audience but at their composition and the story they tell of how different the world you're seeing has become.
While it isn't necessary to have seen the 1982 film, taking in "Blade Runner 2049" will be enhanced if you have already watched the first "Blade Runner" movie. The hand-offs and "touch-backs" to it are that frequent and greatly add depth to the storyline and emotional impact that many of the scenes have in the current film.
All in all, I highly recommend this film. It's a very well crafted piece that delivered on all its promises and more. Villeneuve succeeded in delivering a wonderful follow-on to Scott's original creation that is also uniquely his and appreciated for being so.
Go see it now!