Thinly spread.

Rating: 5/10 (29 March 2018)

I believe they call this kind of film 'world building.' It's an apt description of the results of a talented production team using budget and effects to sustain a convincing environment in which you can immerse yourself. In my view, such is the potency of projects like this, actors are there primarily to compliment this imagined civilisation. In 1982, the original 'Blade Runner' achieved this perverse enigma very convincingly. Here all these years later, is the sequel.
There was some mild controversy concerning original composer Vangelis not being assigned to provide a soundtrack for this, but Benjamin Wallfisch and Hans Zimmer's score is impossible to fault. Vast, weird, laced with industrial swirls and chunky klaxons. Denis Villeneuve's direction is vast and eccentric, exactly as it should be, and the myriad of art directors ensure that the society, the interiors, the streets, even the habitat of Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford of course: grizzled, isolated, but still very much the same character we knew 35 years ago) is as impressive and spacious as it could be, an arena so absorptive and convincing, you can completely drink it in. My problem is, at 2 hrs 44 minutes, I really felt the need for a change of flavour after a while.
It's impossible to be impressed at wonderful representations of an intricately carved tale for that length of time with no change of tone throughout, no levity, no particular sense of strident drama and only an irregular threat (Sylvia Hoek's splendid Luv). We have K (Ryan Gosling) and his girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas, who, as a perfectly pouting, characterless hologram, is very good) and the very slow story of Deckard's 'improbable' child Rachael, and the long trek to locate her. It is good, but thinly stretched over such huge running time. Wrapping it in the beauty of almost overwhelming effects and atmosphere is an impressive compensation, however.