A pale shadow of the original. Slow, brooding, and not a filling meal.

Rating: 4/10 (25 July 2018)

This film is slow as dripping molasses. Very little suspense. Most of the film is spent developing the Gosling character. He is great as usual. The problem is he just did not have that much to work with. Most of the stunning visuals from the first one, are missing. Even Altered Carbon is more fun to look at. It just looks like a very heavily polluted version of Beijing, with a bit of LA thrown in. It appears that little money was spent on the sets, costumes, or decor. When you consider how dazzling the original was, one has to wonder why so little effort to replicate at least some of that magic?
K's in love with Joi (Ana de Armas), an adoring hologram who places a simulation of a steak on top of K's real dinner-a plate of drab microwave noodles-while Frank Sinatra croons on the speakers in the background. It's painfully clear that K wants to be an American man, though this cozy image of tranquility is as illusory for him as it is for the people who feel the American dream has left them behind. K isn't human (or is he?), isn't living with someone, and his anonymous apartment is locked off from a neighborhood engulfed in poverty. Everything in this world is impersonal and corporately manufactured. Where Deckard used to buy noodles from a vendor, K gets meals on the run from a vending machine. Human jobs are rendered obsolete whenever possible, further detaching us from a centralized society and ironically sending us scurrying to our phones and computers for refuge.
The premise of this film is not enough. And Harrison Ford is absolutely wasted in this film. Not even sure why he was included, nor what the scenes with him were meant to represent. He is inept, incapable, old, tired, and just not up to the task at hand, which is hugely disappointing. And the ending. What a terrible ending. For a director as talented as Villaneuve, this is a surprising result. I watched this film again last night, as I was very unimpressed the first time around. Figured I might pick up on some subtext, some subtle hints, some secondary plots. Nothing there. This film is as empty as the Empty Quarter in Saudi Arabia. Not much there. I say this as a major sci-fi buff. Not much there.