Los Angeles, 2049. Replicants, artificial humans, work as the lower class for humans. One of the replicants is police officer K, who works as a Blade Runner, an officer in charge of eliminating runaway replicants. Upon finding the skeleton of Rachael, a replicant, LAPD discovers she actually gave birth, previously thought as impossible for replicants. K is sent to find the child, now a grown up. In the ruins of Las Vegas, he discovers Deckard still alive, who is the father of the said child. Wallace, CEO of the successor corporation in charge of creating replicants, sends agent Luv to get the child before K. Luv kidnaps Deckard, but K saves him and kills Luv. K sends Deckard to reunite with his child, a daughter, now a grown up, Dr. Ana Stelline, a replicant memory designer.
35 years after the stand-alone Sci-Fi classic "Blade Runner", director Dennis Villeneuve and screenwriters Hampton Fancher and Michael Green delivered a sequel nobody expected: they stayed rather faithful to the design and aesthetics of the original, but went way overboard with the slow pace, 'autistic' narrative (especially in the second half, where it is sometimes not clear what is going on) and an incomplete, interrupted ending—in fact, the ending could have made for the start of a better film. Several good ideas in the first half justify the existence of the initial concept—the highlight is probably the fascinating invention of a hologram girlfriend, who acts as some sort of a companion and sweet illusion for the lonely K in his apartment, indicating how the future technology might have various new solutions for problems of the masses. Villeneuve's direction is tight and with a clear infatuation for the science-fiction genre, but it is a pity the script crafted a story with two major omissions, since two important subplots are introduced, but are puzzlingly forgotten and never brought up again. One is the underground replicant freedom movement, and the other is the bad guy, Wallace. Both disappear and are not resolved by the end of the movie. Harrison Ford returns as Deckard, with a dignified, though rather underwhelming role this time around. "Blade Runner 2049" delivers a careful continuation of the 1st film, but it lacks the mood of the original, sometimes ending just as a collection of random pretty pictures without a thread that gives them a purpose.
Grade:++
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