BLADE STUNNER!
Whisper it, but the Blade Runner sequel may just have pipped Ridley Scott’s masterful original
Blade Runner 2049 (15) Verdict: Astonishing
The Falklands War had been over for less than a fortnight when Ridley Scott’s classic science-fiction film Blade Runner came out in 1982. It took our minds off current affairs by imagining life, brilliantly if thankfully not all that presciently, in the outlandishly distant year of 2019.
Now, 35 years later, we finally have a sequel, possibly even more brilliant and enigmatic than the original.
The mostly rapturous reviews are richly deserved and, of course, the need to take our minds off a new set of current affairs just as pronounced. Scott, an executive producer this time, can be delighted — and perhaps also mildly perturbed — that his original eighties masterpiece has been matched. Maybe, whisper it, eclipsed.
This film, wonderfully directed by Denis Villeneuve, projects forward to southern California in 2049. Los Angeles is a grimly dystopian city, lashed with rain presumably as a result of advanced global warming. The monolithic police department towers over everything.
Our hero is an unsmiling cop played by Ryan Gosling, last seen in this part of the world hoofing and crooning his way through La La Land. his character here could hardly be more different. Nor could the urban backdrop. Don’t expect palm trees and sparkling surf. The only dazzle comes from Gosling’s superb, unshowy performance. he gets terrific support, too, from a cast which includes the original star harrison Ford.
But this movie belongs above all to its French-Canadian director. Villeneuve’s last picture was 2016’s Arrival, another accomplished slice of sci-fi, but not an instant classic. Unequivocally, this is.
It’s a spectacular, virtuoso piece of film-making and represents another feather in a cap now resembling an Apache chief’s headdress for veteran British cinematographer Roger Deakins. I can’t think of a film even in his lengthy line of credits that better showcases his mastery of colour and light.
his cinematography, hans Zimmer’s fantastic electronic score (which right at the end, nods to the great Vangelis soundtrack from the first movie) and a screenplay cowritten by the original writer hampton Fancher, all add heft to Villeneuve’s thrilling vision. Mind you, it’s fair to add the actual narrative isn’t always that easy for us to follow.
happily, it’s never less than a lot of fun trying. There are some whopping existentialist ideas, and philosophical teasers about memory and childhood, wrapped up in the film’s sci-fi thriller framework. At times I was reminded of Stanley Kubrick’s mighty 2001: A Space Odyssey.
But even if you don’t feel quite equipped to make the plunge into its cerebral depths — and at times, I confess, I didn’t — this movie is astonishing to look at. See it in IMAX if you can. As a cinematic spectacle, it is genuinely jaw-dropping.
Gosling plays officer KD6-3.7, usefully shortened to K. he is a cop also working as a so- called blade runner, charged with ‘ retiring’ ( in other words, executing) certain pesky replicants.
These are androids who were engineered to be slaves to humankind and indeed K is a replicant himself. But some of his kind have lived too long and need wiping out before they upset the world
order with an inflated sense of their own importance.
K goes about his business with cold professionalism, solemnly following the orders of his ruthless boss (Robin Wright, almost as formidable as her Claire Underwood in the TV drama House Of Cards) and perking up only when he gets home to his cramped apartment.
Waiting there for him is his very sexy hologram girlfriend (Ana de Armas), who first materialises as a Fifties housewife, but can change costume or melt away altogether in the blink of an eye, to a jingle from Prokofiev’s Peter And The Wolf. Mischievously, the film presents her as the only character with genuine humanity. Yet she isn’t even real. As FORK, at first he seems to be simply a futuristic version of sam spade or Philip Marlowe, a film- noir sleuth Humphrey Bogart might have recognised, except for the virtual-reality sex and a session in an interrogation chamber every time he gets back to base to see whether he has started registering dangerous humanoid impulses. But then a momentous discovery, involving an old wooden toy, begins to suggest that he might himself be at the heart of the case he is investigating.
Whether he is or isn’t, it’s not only the forces of law and order who are interested in his findings. so are a sinister tycoon (Jared Leto), a mass-manufacturer of replicants; and his scary henchwoman ( marvellously played by sylvia Hoeks).
so far, no Harrison Ford. But then the plot leads K to Las Vegas, where the grizzled old trouper pops up at last, playing his 1982 character Rick Deckard as an elderly recluse, with much to be reclusive about.
This is where Villeneuve has some real fun. Vegas icons Elvis Presley, Frank sinatra and Liberace all make fleeting appearances. Marilyn Monroe, too.
sometimes, the ideas and images come so thick and fast that you can hardly process them. A workhouse scene, for example, makes any child exploitation episode described by Charles Dickens seem more like a chapter from Enid Blyton.
There aren’t many films of this prodigious length (two hours, 43 minutes) that I feel minded to see twice in a week, but once, frankly, didn’t seem enough.
I still can’t decide whether Blade Runner 2049 really is better than the original. It isn’t as quotable and it lacks a single character as electrifyingly memorable as Rutger Hauer’s replicant philosopher.
It will also be interesting to see how it plays on the small screen, which is where the 1982 movie first flourished. And yet, if it doesn’t get a barrage of Academy Award nominations, then I’m a replicant, too.
A shorter version of this review appeared in earlier editions.