NOMERE REPLICATION
Welcome back to the apocalyptic realm of “Blade Runner,” the iconic science fiction universe that began our cinematic love affair with dystopia. Director Denis Villeneuve seduces us with a brutally sexy neo-noir version of the apocalypse, a bleak endgame for mankind played out against an epic L.A. odyssey of artificial intelligence, corporate greed and environmental collapse. While so many sequels are content to cheaply knock off their origin stories, “Blade Runner 2049” very respectfully tries to deepen the original mythology authored by Philip K. Dick. While the sequel’s heady existentialism sometimes slips into the ponderous, it’s also a stylishmystery shot through with intensely brooding visuals that keep us guessing for most of its two hour and 43 minutes. Make no mistake, hard-core devotees of Ridley Scott’s original 1982 film starring Harrison Ford will never be satisfied by any attempt at replication, but this is a must-see for anyone else beguiled by the cyborg fable. Thirty years after the androids first shed tears in the rain we return to a bleak California wasteland of neon and concrete where life is cheap, child slaves pick through trash on the beach and massive walls hold back the ever rising sea. But now the universe is darker andmore dangerous. When L.A. cop K (Ryan Gosling, looking less Ken Doll-ish than usual) is sent after a rogue replicant (android) who “wants more life,” he stumbles upon secrets that blow his mind.
Along the way, he tracks down the original replicant hunter, Detective Deckard (a grizzled Ford) who’s been in hiding all along and navigates a total-surveillance police statewhere freedom, like trees, has long been extinct. K’s commanding officer, a paragon of grim practicality, is perfectly played by a steely RobinWright. His holographic girlfriend Joi (Ana de Armas) is a poster child for artificial intelligence as the only warmth in a plastic society.
Villeneuve (“Sicario,” “Arrival”) proves himself amaster world builder, conjuring up a future that seems far less fantastical than it once did. The flashing beehive of omnipresent electronic screens in this cautionary tale certainly seems entirely plausible, bathing the alienated citizenry in a tsunami of mindless advertising for brands such as Atari and PanAm, the ghosts of commercials past. Food ismostly bugs, the only sustainable protein source, and serfdom is the lot of all but the lucky few. The rich and powerful get to live off-world, the rest of us rot in the cyberpunk wreckage of earth.
So visceral is this disori- enting vision for a future where humanity is enslaved by galaxy-wide pools of venture capital that it seems far less far-fetched than it once did. That’s the genius of the picture, the themes are as stimulating as the surreal cinematography by Roger A. Deakins, evoking the gorgeous terrors of a post-modern metropolis.
Embedded with shades of everything from Shakespeare to “Planet of the Apes,” there are times when themovie takes itself too seriously but it will still leave you unsettled with its kaleidoscopic vision of nightmares to come.
Ford, for one, is at his most poignant here and his Ozymandian interludes amid the colossal ruins of Las Vegas remind us that this movie lacks a central hero as romantic as the Deckard of yore. It’s not that Gosling isn’t handsome or relatable, but K’s philosophical quandaries never cut as close to the bone as the those on, say, “Westworld.” The center of the film, despite all its richly- stylized ornamentation, remains a little emotionally hollow.
Also, the villains here are less mesmerizing than they should be. Jared Leto is such a snooze as the robot titan Niander Wallace that it makes one pine for Rutger Hauer.
Certainly once the puzzles are revealed here, the ending feels anti-climatic, unlike the original— which never gave away its haunting sense of doubt and melancholy.
Still, as a parable about the perils of a populace so obsessed with virtual reality that it loses touch with the primal force of nature, this “Blade” slices deep.