A strong film

Rating: 8/10 (14 October 2017)

If there's one thing The Force Awakens has taught me, it's that critics are not always reliable. Also shortly before I saw this movie, I saw it advertised on YouTube with the incredibly pretentious line "The critics have spoken". Considering most of them couldn't recognize a piece of crap like TFA when it smacked them in the face, I would take most of their reviews with a healthy pinch of salt.
But does my lack of faith in critics mean they were wrong about this movie? Not necessarily. Having never seen the first Blade Runner, I can't comment on this as a sequel, only as a standalone film. And as a standalone film, I'd give it at least 8 out of 10. It didn't blow me away but at the same time, I couldn't find many problems with it. There were a lot of unanswered questions so it kind of feels like it's setting up a sequel - something that most Hollywood movies do this days which can be seen as a good thing or a bad thing, depending on the film and franchise - but it can also work on its own if you just take it as K's story rather than thinking about how it affects the overall franchise. Fortunately, this is easy to do since he's the lead.
Ryan Gosling delivered a strong performance but there were times where I felt he was being a little too subdued. I understand that was part of the character as K, or Joe as he was later called, wasn't a very emotional man but it also made his burst of emotion when he was with Dr Stelline feel a little out of place. Not bad but I felt like it didn't have the necessary build-up of repressed emotion to result in that reaction. Ironically, the opposite occurred when his holographic wife/girlfriend died. If he was ever going to have a burst of emotion, it should have been in that scene which could have been the most heart-breaking scene in the movie. Unfortunately, it was glanced over too quickly and Gosling didn't look nearly as pained by it as Harrison Ford looked when Rick Deckard was talking with Nianda Wallace, played by Jared Leto (who didn't have much screen-time but is very different in this movie than he was in Suicide Squad so the guy can act with the right direction), about his dead lover.
Speaking of Harrison Ford, he was in less than half the movie so I spent a good chunk of it waiting for him to show up. When he finally did, he quickly overshadowed Gosling for the rest of the film. My favourite scene was Deckard's talk with Wallace. Deckard only had a handful of lines in that scene but I just had to look at his face to know how much the death of his lover and loss of his children pained him. He also had one of the greatest lines in the film "Sometimes, in order to love someone, you have to be a stranger" explaining why he hid his children rather than raising them himself. Finally, I liked his final scene where he simply put his hand on the glass as his long lost daughter approached him. No words were needed. They just let the moment speak for itself.
I also liked Robin Wright's character, Lt Joshi. I don't think I've ever seen Wright in a movie before and if I have, she didn't leave much of an impression but she was likable enough to make me wish that she hadn't been killed off.
Overall this is a strong movie. It's well written, directed and acted, particularly by Harrison Ford despite him not having as much screen-time as you might expect, but not quite good enough to make me a Blade Runner fan. However, I expect those of you who are fans will love it.