Directed by: Denis Villeneuve
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Robin Wright, Sylvia Hoeks, Jared Leto
Rated R, 164 minutes
“Blade Runner 2049” isn’t just everything a sequel should be, it’s everything a movie should be. Which is a genuine surprise; few people were clamoring for a sequel to “Blade Runner,” arguably the greatest sci-fi film ever made, but Denis Villeneuve and company have made a convincing case for why a sequel should exist, and why it should exist right now. “Blade Runner 2049” is a lesser masterpiece than its predecessor, but a masterpiece nonetheless.
“Blade Runner 2049” picks up 30 years after Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford, reprising his role) fled with a replicant, one of the bioengineered humanoids that have been developed for enslavement in this dystopian future—and which, in his capacity as a blade runner, Deckard was supposed to “retire.” Now, in 2049, blade runners like Deckard have been replaced by newer replicant models, such as the even-keeled Officer K (Ryan Gosling, “La La Land”).
When K discovers in the course of his duties that a replicant has given birth to a child—something long thought impossible—his boss, Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright, “Wonder Woman”), orders him to find the child and destroy it; if word gets out that replicants can reproduce, the world could be undone by a violent uprising. As he investigates who and where this child is, K encounters resistance from the replicant manufacturer Niander Wallace (Jared Leto, “Dallas Buyers Club”) and his assistant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks, “The Best Offer”), who themselves want to find the child and study it, in order to exploit replicants’ reproductive abilities for the benefit of Wallace’s empire. Soon, however, Wallace and Joshi’s interferences take a backseat to far more pressing questions about K’s own identity and, eventually, what defines a life in the first place.
As you can imagine, “Blade Runner 2049” is highly political, delving into themes of identity and exploring how those of privileged status justify the exploitation of whole classes of people. Few films have so elegantly challenged us to examine our biases, to truly see the validity of the lives of others. If your experiences seem real to you, the movie says, then they are real, full-stop; the biggest mistake we make is to forget that the same is true for everybody else.
Paired with vigorous performances, these themes feel fresh and important. Bright spots include Robin Wright and Sylvia Hoeks, both of whom imbue their characters with stark, vicious logic; in a movie full of engrossing moments, theirs are the most chilling scenes. For Gosling’s part, he is an admirable, if impersonal, lead. However, this is the rare film where his laconic line delivery works—after all, K isn’t human. Meanwhile, the wide supporting cast adds vivid splashes of color, which, along with impressive production design and immaculate camerawork, make the movie feel like a full, panoramic portrait of a fictional world.
The movie’s few weaknesses are products of this excess; if the overarching lesson of “Blade Runner” was that less is more, “2049” begs to differ, to uneven effect. Consider Hans Zimmer’s score, which nods to Vangelis’ iconic work on “Blade Runner,” but asserts its independence purely by being louder, making the music here sound more like Zimmer’s “Inception” leftovers than a descendant of one of the greatest film scores ever written. Or consider the film’s slowness and inefficiency; slow pacing and adding superfluous footage aren’t the same thing, but Denis Villeneuve doesn’t seem to grasp the difference.
Villeneuve also makes the mistake, as he did in last year’s “Arrival,” of clumsily spelling out important plot points. Either he doesn’t trust viewers to understand what’s going on, or he doesn’t trust himself to convey information through other means. It’s a shame, because when he’s not checking himself, Villeneuve actually handles this film’s complex storylines with enviable grace.
To be sure, though, these are minor quibbles, given the movie’s excellence in so many other aspects. Befitting a movie whose central plot concerns a child and its parents, “Blade Runner 2049” feels like the prodigal child of “Blade Runner”—conceptually and stylistically cut from the same cloth, but possessed of a voice and ambition all its own. Sure, “2049” had an impossible standard to match, but the valiant effort here should nevertheless be a clarion call to filmmakers of all genres and dispositions: This is what a movie can be.
Originally published in The Harvard Press on 10/20/17.