BLADE
RUNNER 2049

		Review by E.C.McMullen Jr.
WILL YOU? TIP JAR BLADE RUNNER: THE FINAL CUT MOVIE REVIEW BLADE RUNNER 2049 - 2017 USA Release: Oct. 6, 2017 Warner Bros., Alcon Entertainment, Sony, Columbia Pictures Rated: USA: R

As with the original BLADE RUNNER, BLADE RUNNER 2049 opens with text onscreen to put us in the future dystopia of California.

As before it's not necessary because it's explained throughout the movie, several times over.

Then we see a blighted environmental disaster caused by thousands upon thousands of square miles of solar panels gathering little sunlight beneath an overcast sky.

A flightcraft, zooms into the picture, we are inside the flightcraft which is, largely autopilot driven, and it is here we meet the mostly silent person who we will come to know as Constant K (Ryan Gosling: FRANKENSTEIN AND ME, MURDER BY NUMBERS, STAY, FRACTURE, DRIVE).

Director Denis Villeneuve (ENEMY, ARRIVAL) offers long stretches of landscape here, reminiscent not only of Ridley Scott, but of Stanley Kubrick as well. Like the carpeting of mirrors directed at a sunless sky, California also has blighted farmland where no green grows. Instead, these are the synthetic farms of Niander Wallace (Jared Leto: SWITCHBACK, URBAN LEGEND, AMERICAN PSYCHO, REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, PANIC ROOM, MR. NOBODY), this sequel's corporate villain to who fills the shoes of BLADE RUNNER's Dr. Eldon Tyrell. Niander has taken over the bankrupt Tyrell Corporation and is making replicants again, by the millions.

From there we go inside a type of greenhouse. Someone in a protective suitsuit stands in clear water and pulls up a handful of living grub, things. The shadow of K's flightcraft noisely appears overhead. K is not trying to make a quiet entrance. As K leaves his craft, a drone detaches from his car to survey the area.

K enters a house without knocking, makes himself comfortable in a stranger's home, meets the occupant, Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista: THE SCORPION KING 3, RIDDICK, GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY [all], L.A. SLASHER, SPECTRE, MARAUDERS, BUSHWICK) and Merry Mishaps occur.

K is a Blade Runner and there remains work for his kind of job.

Job done, K radios in to his high strung boss, Lieutenant Joshi (Robin Wright: UNBREAKABLE), while the last words of Sapper echo in K's seemingly implacable mind.

Before K leaves the farm he nearly overlooks a small green plant with yellow flowers, laid at the base of a dead tree. He has his drone scan the area below the flower. A box is buried deep below the base of the tree's roots. Joshi will send a crew to fetch it, she wants K to return "home" for his baseline.

The flight back to Los Angeles is as depressingly ugly as the flight leaving it.

Back at his station, K gives his co-workers a wide berth. Soon he is taking a Post-Traumatic Baseline Test. His full name is KDS-3.7.

His test consists of him responding by rote to a series of questions. You'll hear "Cells" and "Interlinked" a lot in this movie.

A. Lot.

It snows that night in Los Angeles, or least something that looks like snow falls from the sky and covers the street.

Unlike the first BLADE RUNNER, earth is now magically overpopulated in only 20 years despite having come to the edge of a global famine, and K lives in a decrepit apartment building where the neighbors are noisy vulgar fighting louts. Many appear inebriated and hang out, smoking in the hall.

Somebody, maybe everyone knows K is a Replicant as someone wrote "Fuck Off Skinner" on his door. Skinner or Skin job being a vulgar epithet for a Replicant.

In his apartment, K talks to a computer voice named Joi (Ana de Armas: FARADAY, ANABEL) with a casual interaction that suggests a committed romantic relationship.

The voice visually establishes itself as a lovely young woman who dotes on K and offers him hologram dinner.

He gives her a present. The gift is a hardware upgrade.

When we meet the blind Niander Wallace in his own environment he drearily spouts the standard mad capitalist bromides we've heard in SyFy channel movies for decades. Now that I've told you that, whatever you think Niander is going to say on the screen, you're right. It's that predictable.

Unlike Syfy movies, Jared Leto is a solid actor and delivers it better than anyone else I've ever heard. Screenwriters Hampton Fancher (BLADE RUNNER, THE MINUS MAN) and Michael Green (LOGAN, ALIEN: CONVENANT) wrote elegant words and if this introductory scene of Niander was his quiet moment of reveal, if this was the seemingly personal moment, wholly separate from his usual behavior, because in the context of this scene he allows himself quiet instrospection, that would be great.

But this is his only dimension.

His monologue is still the same old Belloq1 philosophy of evil, which will have you yearning for the direct and intelligent discourse of Dr. Eldon Tyrell (played by the chilling Joe Turkel).

Niander has a villainous Igor, of course, who will stop at nothing to fulfill her boss's wishes, even going above and beyond what he wants to get his much desired Kudo. Her name is Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) and she goes so far as to give of an Iago vibe even while she seems to have feelings for Niander.

For the rest of the movie, K is bent on solving a mystery, then burying it, to prevent an earth destroying war that Lt. Joshi is certain will happen.

Like Niander, Lt. Joshi is also veneer.

Joshi could be wrong. She could be way off the mark. Not that K is able to do anything about that.

Lt. Joshi: "Are you telling me no?"
K: "I wasn't aware that was an option, madame."
Lt. Joshi: "Good boy."

Over the course of the investigation, however, K discovers that...

O K. Any fan of Detective Noir will come away from this movie realizing that, while as visually and aurally appealing as any Villeneuve movie, it's also as unengaging.

Denis is aware of the boxes he must check to make a type of movie and he's pedantic in marking every last one.

His movie is technically beautiful.

It's also slower than it possibly needs to be. BLADE RUNNER 2049, has brief moments of set piece action blanketed in layer upon layer of 2 hour and 30 minute movie that crawls to the finish line.

It crawls indifferently through its red herrings across a beautifully imagined world (I know I said ugly, but ugly can be beautiful. Barren Deserts, the Moon, Mars, the airbrush work of H.R. Giger) and Fancher and Green did a wonderful job of telling it, but despite the promise of the production designed stage, the director did not know how to tell this story. If you were reading subtitles instead of hearing it, an inordinate amount of time where nothing is happening would be filled with ellipses.

No amount of bright Christmas lights, giant signs that exist - not to express a future world - only to advertise product, or the blunt use of on the nose thematic scene colors can change that (Blue for outside. Green for inside. Niander's contained world is yellow. Rick Deckard's ghost town is Orange).

It's 2022. Science Fiction and Thriller fans can't go a day without seeing someone on social media reference Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER in some way. By comparison, BLADE RUNNER 2049's existence remains nearly invisible in that shadow.

3 Shriek Girls.

This review copyright 2022 E.C.McMullen Jr.

GET SOME CLOTHES ON
20 Years of Spreading The Love by FeoAmante	FEO AMANTE: Past The Point of Cute by Feo Amante

YOU MIGHT ALSO ENJOY (Sub-Section: THEY LIVE AMONG US!)
SOYLENT GREEN MOVIE REVIEW	WESTWORLD MOVIE REVIEW	THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR MOVIE REVIEW

Return to Movies