BLADE RUNNER 2049 (2017)

Studio:       Columbia Pictures
Director:    Denis Villeneuve
Writer:       Hampton Fancher, Michael Green
Producer:  Andrew A. Kosove, Broderick Johnson, Bud Yorkin, Cynthia Sikes Yorkin
Stars:     Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armis, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto

Review Score:

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Summary:

30 years after Rick Deckard’s disappearance, a new blade runner uncovers a mystery that could lead to a replicant revolution.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Industrialist Niander Wallace’s mastery of synthetic farming averted famine after the ecosystems collapsed in the mid 2020s. Wallace then acquired the remains of the bankrupt Tyrell Corporation and created a new line of obedient, lawful replicants. However, Tyrell’s older model Nexus 8 replicants with open-ended lifespans continue to be hunted and retired by blade runners.

California – June 30th, 2049 – Blade runner Officer KD6-3.7, a newer model replicant, confronts Nexus 8 replicant Sapper Morton at Morton’s remote farm. Following a fight, K executes Morton.

K finds a military footlocker buried beneath a tree outside. K’s superior Lieutenant Joshi sends in a dig team while K reports back to LAPD HQ for a post-traumatic baseline test.

K returns home to his holographic girlfriend Joi. K gifts Joi with an emanator that enables her to move about freely.

Joshi summons K back to LAPD HQ. Forensic analyst Coco reveals that a skeleton found inside Morton’s footlocker belonged to a pregnant woman who died during childbirth 30 years earlier. K notices a serial number on the skeleton, revealing that it belonged to a replicant. Frightened at the implication that replicants might be able to procreate, Joshi orders K to destroy all of the evidence in addition to identifying and killing the replicant child.

Wallace Corporation – Earth Headquarters – Mr. Wallace’s replicant representative Luv traces the skeleton’s serial number to Tyrell’s experimental replicant Rachael, who disappeared with blade runner Rick Deckard in 2019. K next goes to see retired LAPD officer Gaff to ask about Deckard.

Luv reports to Wallace. After examining and then killing a new model replicant, Wallace tasks Luv with finding the replicant child so that he might discover how to speed up replicant production through procreation.

Rogue replicant Freysa tasks Doxie pleasure model replicant Mariette with finding out what K knows about the replicant child. K and Mariette have a brief conversation.

K returns to Morton’s farm where he finds a baby’s sock hidden in a piano. K also finds the date “06-10-21” carved into the base of the tree, which triggers a childhood memory of a toy horse made from wood carved with the same date. K torches Morton’s house.

Luv infiltrates LAPD HQ. Luv kills Coco when he tries to stop her from stealing Rachael’s skeleton.

K reports back to Joshi. During their conversation, K tells Joshi about his memory, presumed to be an implant, of running from other boys as a child before hiding his wooden horse.

Joi helps K research the DNA archive for anomalies regarding the date, which she realizes is K’s birthday. K finds records for a boy and a girl with identical DNA. While the girl supposedly died of Galatians Syndrome, the boy reportedly disappeared from Morrillcole Orphanage.

Los Angeles Municipal Waste Processing – San Diego District – At the ruins of the former orphanage, scavengers try capturing K, but are repelled when Luv remotely deploys missiles that kill them. K finds child labor slaver Mister Cotton and forces him to turn over the former orphanage records. However, Cotton discovers that the records for the date in question are missing.

K recognizes the ruined building from his memory. K discovers the wooden horse in the place where he remembers it being hid.

K takes the horse home to Joi. Convinced that the horse proves K was born and not created, Joi gives K the name Joe.

To confirm his suspicion that he is the replicant child, K goes to see artificial memory maker Dr. Ana Stelline. Dr. Stelline tearfully confirms that K’s memory of hiding the horse is real.

The LAPD takes K into custody. K fails his baseline test, relieving him from active duty. K tells Joshi that he retired the replicant child, but provides no further details. Joshi helps K escape the station while advising K that he has 48 hours to get himself back on track or else he will be hunted.

K goes home to Joi to discover that Joi invited Mariette. Joi synchs her A.I. to Mariette’s body so that she and K can be physically intimate. After they have sex, Mariette hides a tracker in K’s jacket.

K decides to go on the run. Joi convinces K to take her with him, even though transferring Joi to a mobile emitter requires deleting her backup data from the home console.

K takes the horse to Doc Badger. From the horse’s radiation signature, Badger discovers that the horse came from Las Vegas.

K travels to the ruins of Las Vegas where he tracks down Deckard. When their physical faceoff stalls in a standoff, the two men agree to a conversation over whiskey. K asks about the replicant child. Deckard reluctantly reveals that he was forced to abandon his baby as part of a replicant plan to hide its identity and keep the child’s location secret.

Having killed Joshi and used Joshi’s workstation to locate K, Luv and several other Wallace enforcers blast their way into Deckard’s hideout. After permanently erasing Joi by destroying her emitter, Luv leaves K for dead. Luv then captures Deckard.

Using the tracker planted by Mariette, rogue replicants locate K and take him to Freysa. Freysa explains that the replicant child’s birth means replicants are more human than human, as well as their own masters. As one of the replicants involved in hiding the child’s identity, Freysa adds that their resistance movement aims to build an army for a replicant revolution. However, Freysa needs K to kill Deckard so that Deckard cannot lead Wallace to the child, whom they intend to lead them. K is taken aback by the final revelation that Rachael and Deckard’s child is actually female, and K was merely a manipulated decoy.

At his headquarters, Wallace questions Deckard. Intending to coax him into revealing information about the child, Wallace presents Deckard with a recreated Rachael replicant. Deckard turns away from the replicant, noting that Rachael’s eyes were a different color. Luv executes the Rachael duplicate. Wallace has Luv transport Deckard off-world for intensive interrogation.

K intercepts Deckard’s escort during a violent storm. A brutal fight between K and Luv ends with K drowning Luv. K rescues Deckard from the water. K tells Deckard he will make it look as though Deckard drowned so that Deckard can meet his daughter.

Having deduced that she is the real replicant child, K takes Deckard to see Dr. Ana Stelline. While K lies down and dies from his injuries outside the facility, Deckard goes inside and comes face to face with Ana.

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Review:

Blade runner Rick Deckard and experimental replicant Rachael disappeared 30 years ago.  Since then, the Wallace Corporation grew from the bankrupted ruins of Tyrell and with it came a new breed of lawfully obedient replicants.

KD6-3.7 is one such replicant.  ‘K’ is also a blade runner, an LAPD officer tasked with hunting and exterminating remaining Tyrell replicants who’ve gone into hiding.  They may be different models, but K’s anomalous apathy toward his own kind makes his soulless self outwardly colder than the average skinjob, even though he see still seeks personal intimacy from his holographic companion Joi.

K’s latest assignment to forcibly retire another rogue replicant should be routine.  It becomes anything but when K uncovers a buried box containing a skeleton.  This skeleton in turn reveals a secret threatening to change everything humans thought they knew about artificial intelligence.  Boring to the core of this mystery not only requires K to confront his own conflicted identity, but forces him to find the one man who might reveal the truth: Rick Deckard.

Of Ridley Scott’s original “Blade Runner” (review here), I previously said, “if you break the hypnotic spell of the undeniably amazing production design, the reality is you’re stuck staring at a (patiently paced) police procedural.”  The former action describes what director Denis Villeneuve’s “Blade Runner 2049” does by altering its atmospheric artistry.  The latter result describes a distillation of the sequel’s remaining substance.

“Blade Runner 2049” evolves the slow burn science-fiction of its predecessor from heavy doses of Harrison Ford looking passively pensive in seated conversations to heavier doses of Ryan Gosling wearing an expression of concerned confusion while standing or walking.  This time around, a slightly more satisfying story propels plotting.  It isn’t a simple hide-and-seek hunt at least.  But K seemingly cracks the case before the one-hour mark, making much of his remaining mission a hoop jump of verifying what he thinks he already knows.

Of course, it turns out that things aren’t entirely what they appear to be.  This instead means that “Blade Runner 2049’s” lengthy goose chase does more to orchestrate a series of one-and-done scenes for its stars than it does to creatively contribute to a largely quiet narrative.

MILD CONTEXTUAL SPOILERS

Dave Bautista appears in a single instance as the rebellious replicant providing K’s first breadcrumb.  Blink and you’ll miss Wood Harris’ quick appearance as an ultimately inconsequential LAPD officer.  Serving purely as momentary fan service connective tissue, Edward James Olmos never leaves a chair for his 50-second reprisal of Officer Gaff.  Lennie James earns over double that duration for his only sequence, though Oscar nominee Barkhad Abdi can’t find a full 90 seconds of screen time.

If not for their brief reappearances later, David Dastmalchian’s forensics analyst and Carla Juri’s artificial memory maker would also only feature once.  Reverse that order for Hiam Abbass’ replicant resistance leader.  Even Jared Leto has just two scenes.

What of second-billed star Harrison Ford?  He doesn’t enter frame until almost one hour and 45 minutes have elapsed, a period of time longer than a majority of major movies.  There’s a valid story justification for this.  Yet when a studio features one of the world’s biggest box office draws on a poster, in trailers, and incentivizes audience interest by purporting his prominence, back-loading Ford to the film’s fourth quarter feels mildly misleading.

END SPOILERS

Maybe the script had grander plans at one time for everyone above.  Regardless, the final cut renders many actors’ inclusions either superfluous or negligible.

Action, what little of it exists, limits itself primarily to Ryan Gosling getting his face smashed during various confrontations.  In the meantime, strap in for a feature-length episode of “Law and Order: Blade Runner Unit” whose nine-figure budget depicts the future as depressingly dull.

Marching to a tepid tempo is par for the course for a “Blade Runner” film.  The original movie was far from a barnburner of excitement, so it’s partly understandable that the sequel sticks to smolder rather than sizzle.  But for as uneventful as it is, “Blade Runner” irrefutably remains a paragon of phenomenal production design.  To not recreate that same stylized atmosphere strips the setting, as well as the film’s texture, of its distinctiveness.  And the replacement imagery doesn’t come close enough to recreating that visionary grandeur.

Few and far between shots showcase the gritty, congested, Asian-influenced L.A. made familiar by the first film.  “Blade Runner 2049” expands scope somewhat by taking K out into more wide-open vistas, except most of these locations are shrouded in smoke or smog.  Skylines often cannot be seen.  Several interiors reduce eye candy clutter for the streamlined redundancy of repeated arches or cabinets.  The final fight occurs in a dark wave pool.  Such Spartan architecture seems out of synch with the mesmeric Syd Mead designs of “Blade Runner,” as though this production embarrassingly hides cut corners through soundstage simplicity.

Being set halfway into the 21st century can’t even prevent the contemporized equivalent of a microfiche research scene.  Then there are extended hologram performances from both Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley.  Rarely has speculative fiction traveled this far forward only to throw its concepts so far back.

“Blade Runner 2049” builds on “Blade Runner’s” inquisitive “what constitutes a soul?” philosophizing with an initially compelling twist on replicant mythology.  But two hours and 40 minutes becomes an overlong time to slog through cityscape segues and dead end detective dramatics, aching to pinch out sparse kernels of deep dig thematic elements.  That’s essentially what I think about the first film too.  I therefore have to reason that “Blade Runner 2049” adequately follows its forefather’s formula for snail-paced sci-fi tempered by mildly intriguing aesthetics.

Review Score:  50

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