Official
Australian release date: 5/10/17. Viewed: 6/10/17.
Director:
Denis Villeneuve
Actors:
Ryan Gosling, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Harrison Ford
Genre:
Sci-Fi / Mystery
Rating:
MA
‘Blade Runner 2049’ comes 35 years after
the original – and you have to ask, “why?” Directed by Villeneuve (‘Arrival’)
and only produced by Ridley Scott (why is he involved in his own sequel, but
not directing?), it doesn’t even attempt to answer the main question of the first
film – is Deckard (Ford) a replicant? Why is it always raining? Why do Ford
& Leto only have a total of about four scenes between them? Why does it go
for over 2 & a half hours?
There is some plot, with K (Gosling)
being a replicant Blade Runner, tasked by Joshi (Wright) to track down runaway
replicants, which leads to uncovering a mystery surrounding Deckard & Rachael.
It takes 100min for Ford to even appear. In the meantime, Hans Zimmer tries to
recreate the original’s iconic score, but not as synth-y and sometimes a bit
too overwrought. There’s a lot of K interacting with Joi (de Armas), his ‘Her’-like
holographic maid. Most of this is handled quite well, with the CGI of Joi interacting
with the light and her surroundings done excellently. But, it doesn’t help move
the film along at all.
There is occasional bits of
action/violence, mostly thanks to Luv (Hoeks), but not enough to sustain the
first two hours, with the clues slowly unravelling and not much excitement. It
does pick up in the final 45min and has a passable ending, but mostly I’m left
with the feeling of “it looks cool, but why do I care?” Good to see heaps more
of the flying cars, and like ‘Star Wars’, everything looks realistic and “lived-in”,
but most of the concepts have now been explored better by ‘Terminator’ and ‘Mad
Max’.
Overall: Visually stunning, but too long/slow,
with not much emotional impact.
Gav's Rating: 3 stars.
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