Gorgeous, but falls a little short

Rating: 7/10 (8 July 2018)

'Blade Runner 2049' starts strong, with a clean, taut story, and stunning visuals from director Denis Villeneuve. This time the blade runner (Ryan Gosling), the officer responsible for 'retiring' the bioengineered humans referred to as replicants, is a replicant himself, but with a new design to make him more subservient. Early on he uncovers shocking evidence that a female replicant from the past actually gave birth, and is immediately at the center of a conflict between his boss (Robin Wright), who wants to find and kill the offspring, and an industrialist (Jared Leto), who wants to learn the secret of this miracle and build a massive labor force.
As with the first Blade Runner, the film raises some interesting philosophical questions. What does it mean to be a sentient being? Can an engineered being deserve what we want as people - freedom, love, and happiness? And what are the ethics of humanity building such beings? The blade runner has a holographic girlfriend (Ana de Armas), and in one scene, she arranges a prostitute for him, since she herself is disembodied. It's pretty wild when one reflects it's a computer program arranging for sex for a robot. Unfortunately, the philosophical points don't deliver nearly as much as in the first film, where Rutger Hauer faced his mortality and wanted so desperately to meet his maker, those aspects of existence most profoundly human, culminating with that devastating scene in the rain.
Like the first film, this one has a slow pace, but at 163 minutes, it's much longer, and probably too long. It does allow for the story to gradually unfold and all those gorgeous images, but it drags, and I was not a fan of how it played out. The story line muddles a bit, and then rather than being complete, sets itself up for sequels and presumably a franchise. That was a real shame, and on its own lowered by review score by half a tick. The performances are all strong, and it was nice to see Harrison Ford still getting it done at age 75. Overall it's a solid sequel, which is tough to do given the legendary film it follows, but it falls a little short.