A marvellous picture, a tremendous sequel and a visually triumphant piece of pure artistic cinematography.

Rating: 9/10 (12 June 2018)

To be honest, I have never thought that a picture -at least one that is made by mere mortals- could be this perfectly rounded, astonishingly profound and overall sublime and enjoyable: blade runner 2049 superseded all expectations and defied all the unfavourable odds since it was unfortunately met by a less enthusiastic response from the unworthy common cinema crowd, because if such a high end film has been showered with praise by critics who valued its aesthetic and artistic value, yet had such low audience reception- even though it had their amazement - then we simply do not deserve good pictures anymore!
That being said, let's immediately delve into what makes blade runner 2049 such an amazing picture, and one of my all-time favourites. Evidently, there is not a single movie that had succeeded without having a great cast, and this movie is not an exception, gathering some of Hollywood's finest: an ensemble cast containing Ryan Gosling , an actor who ironically fits the role so perfectly, starring as 'K', an android cop whose sole mission is to retire replicants , a form of bioengineered 'humans': organic machines endowed with great strength and intelligence created to obediently serve their human masters. A blade runner in the street jargon, 'K' struggles between exploring his identity and trying to do his job, a position that was once filled by Rick Deckard, played by the great Harrison Ford, the protagonist of the previous picture who is now fleeing the authorities. Their stories interlink so vividly when K's monotonous life with his holographic partner joy -played by Anna de Armas- is shaken by dangerous doubts about his nature and origin which leads him to seek the answers in the troubled and gloomy past of replicant history. The realistically stoic performance of Mr. Gosling and the sense of controversial humanity that Harrison Ford's acting brings to it is surprisingly not the reason that made me exalt it this much; I have seen this dystopian futuristic picture that addresses the worst consequences of human degeneration and societal decadence so fearlessly, as a work of great beauty: behind the urban dark colours of a suffocating futuristic L.A and the rusty colours of a toxic Las Vegas lies a gem of cinematography, the work of a camera moved so creatively to produce one of cinema's greatest shots. Dennis Villeneuve has proven once and for all a place next to this century's best film directors, backed by his brilliant precedent works such as prisoners, Sicario and Arrival. This movie is by all means a visual feast full of sharp colour changes, deep symbolic imagery and ravishing wide shots that celebrate both the pulchritudinous creation that is the lively human form in all its height and the lowest form of exploitation and duplicant maltreatment. But the most astonishing feature of this movie has to be the reality it portrays: if the original blade runner, directed by the brilliant Ridley Scott, had dealt with the segregation and subsequent hunt for duplicants, and asking about what makes us so different, and what makes one human, the sequel has finally put fourth the most important question: 'do androids dream of electrical sheep?'. This picture discusses how new life forms that transcend the limitations of physical existence claim a space so big in our lives that we can no longer live apart from them, something that made an impossibly tragic relationship - the one between K a machine and joy an AI-controlled spectre- procure my compassion.
A moving, well crafted and brilliantly directed movie, blade runner 2049 is by far one of the best sci fi films I have ever watched, and one of the few that made me care about its events even though they are purely fictional, a movie that encountered some misfortunes along the way but succeeded in being the best sequels of all time.