A rambling dull, overlong re-run of the far superior 1982 original

Rating: 4/10 (1 January 2019)

30 years after the events that had taken place in the original film, the new 'best' Blade Runner known as K (Ryan Gosling) learns of a long-buried secret which sets him on a mission to find former Blade Runner Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) who has been in hiding for the last 30 years, but may hold the key to solving this 30 year old mystery, but hot on K's heels is Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) CEO of Wallace Corp who believes that this 'secret' could be just what he needs to fulfil his ultimate ambition; a replicant race that are able to create new life. It's a race-against-time and Wallace sets his best replicant Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) with the task of getting to Deckard before K, but who will reach Deckard first?
When reviewing this film I have the advantage that it was only fairly recently since I watched the original film so a lot of what happened in the original film is still fairly fresh in my mind...
And unfortunately, that only makes this worse for this belated sequel.. For a start, the film is unbearably slow-paced, far too long, with messy plotting, uninteresting and underwritten characters. It's fair to say that the original film was not perfect and suffered from some of these problems, but even the weaker aspects of the original film were stronger than the strongest aspects of this film.
When I watched the original film, I did find myself much more involved in the story; the replicants and their cause was straight-forward and despite them being the antagonists I did find myself having some empathy with their cause. The replicants were also better developed and it has to be said that they also gave far more memorable performances; Rutger Hauer's terrifying turn still resonates with me now as well as Darryl Hannah's sassiness is also something that lingers in the mind. Deckard and Rachael's romance was also handled sensitively and with some degree of believability. The problem is that you get none of that here; the characters are uninteresting, the narrative is a bit choppy, at times it also feels a bit unfocused and really hard to care about. Worst than all of this though is that it's a pretty dull film it's supposed to be a chase picture so why not make it feel like one? Instead of this it's filled with a lot of lengthy rambling scenes that don't seem to add much to the story - in fact all they do is add to the already long running time.
The cast do the best with what they have to work with, but no-one really stood out for me; Gosling sleepwalks through the film and does nothing of interest at any point. I felt more could have been done with him living a lonely existence with his only interaction being with his non-real girlfriend, but this never really develops. Sylvia Hoeks is probably the best thing about this film, but she isn't strong enough to carry this on her own. Jared Leto tries to add some menace, but isn't in the film enough to make much of an impression. Harrison Ford makes an appearance late on, but is probably more transfixed on past glories and wondering why he chose to sign up for this in the first place?
It isn't all bad though, like the original it's a strikingly beautiful looking film - although with the exception of the odd touch here or there it doesn't look all that different to the original (particularly the shots within the city). The action sequences are reasonably good - although again perhaps I appreciated those more based on how uninteresting I found the film as a whole.
It's not completely irredeemable, but it's weak compared to the original and feels somewhat unnecessary.