Review - Blade Runner 2049

July 20, 2019

Blade Runner 2049­ – US, 2017

When we last saw Rick Deckard and his Replicant girlfriend, Rachael, they were in some American countryside and Deckard’s voice was telling us that Gaff’s prediction of a short life for Rachael had been erroneous; at least, that’s what viewers thought was true until those gorgeous panoramic views and Harrison Ford’s last monologue were exorcised from the film and replaced by a more noirish ending, one of Deckard and Rachael getting into an elevator, on the run and headed toward an uncertain future. Oh, and those later versions also hinted that Deckard was a Replicant, a possibility that I always found preposterous. In any event, by the time its “sequel” was released, the Final Cut was being touted as the official version of the film, and many fans had come to believe that Deckard and Rachael were of the same maker.

Fast forward to 2017, a year plagued with sequels and remakes. There was Wonder Woman, Logan, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, War for the Planet of the Apes, another Thor film, Alien: Covenant, the third incarnation of Spider-Man in just over 15 years, and yet another nauseous ride on Pirates of the Caribbean, so of course there had to a sequel to Blade Runner, never mind that it had been 35 years since the original film hit theaters or that sequels to films that old did not have a good track record at the box office. (Anyone remember The Rage: Carrie 2, The Odd Couple II, Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps or The Two Jakes?) By then of course, a sequel could not just be a sequel. No, it had to also be a reboot and to kick off the franchise for the next generation. It had to have newer, younger, better looking characters that could then carry on the franchise after all the remaining legacy ones had been killed off.   

In hindsight, what we get in Denis Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049 is logical, but while it is not in the same vein as Dwayne Johnson’s appearance in The Mummy 2, the bait-and-switch employed in the marketing of Blade Runner 2049 still stings. See, for the film’s first hour and fifty minutes, Harrison Ford does not make an appearance, and after a brief scene of fisticuffs with Ryan Gosling’s younger Blade Runner, he doesn’t have much to do except require rescuing. In other words, Blade Runner 2049 is not your father’s Blade Runner.

In the film, Gosling plays “K”, a blade runner who is also a Replicant. See, it turns out that a man who has apparently never seen a science fiction movie about this sort of thing later decided to market Replicants that are programmed only to obey, which might seem like a good idea had it not already proved disastrous in the first movie. But I digress. The film follows K as he investigates the mysterious claim of a fellow Replicant, played by Dave Bautista, to have witnessed a miracle. That marvelous event is later revealed to have been the birth of a child by a Replicant, the repercussions of which could be catastrophic for humanity as it would start a war between Replicants and humans that could lead the mass extinction of human beings. Seeking to avoid such an outcome, K’s boss (Robin Wright) quietly orders him to destroy all evidence that such a child exists. Gee, I wonder if he’ll do it.

And wouldn’t you know it, the mother of the baby just happens to be named Rachael. Now, I know what you’re thinking. Just where have I seen this before? Well, for starters, there’s V, The Fly II, The X-Files, and the recent re-imagining of Battlestar Galactica. But here’s an even crazier thing. The birth seems to undercut the whole “Deckard is a Replicant” storyline because nowhere in the film is it explained how two Replicants could produce a child. In fact, we’re even told that the creator of the newest generation of Replicants has been trying for years to give them the ability to give life and failed. So, the magic formula must involve a human being, right?

Speaking of the creator, one Nainder Wallace (Jared Leto), I should mention the sheer lunacy of the character. The opening scroll refers to him as having saved humanity from a famine, yet when we finally see him, he spouts off the kind of maniacal dialogue that we have long grown accustomed to hearing from cinematic villains who simply must tell people things they already know. And he must present his villain credential in entirely unrealistic ways, a la Blofeld’s henchmen in Spectre, who proves he’s worthy of the job by killing a fellow villain in front of a crowd of approving baddies. Here, he creates a new Replicant only to kill it a second later because it does not have the ability to give birth, and before you ask, yes, he knew this before he did it, and yes, he narrates his actions the entire time.

And while I’m on the subject of odd details, I can’t help mentioning the city that featured so prominently in the first preview for the film. That was the one in which K walks through a dusty abandoned city looking for Deckard. The city, it turns out, has so much radiation that it is virtually abandoned. When the bad guys arrive looking for them, they exit their flying vehicles wearing masks, yet there’s Deckard, living there for who knows how many years and never, it seems, wearing anything resembling standard radiation protection. The guy’s simply indestructible.     

Perhaps, as is true with the last two Star Wars movies, audiences will enjoy the film more if they haven’t seen Blade Runner. Then, they won’t see the similarities between K and Rutger Hauser’s Roy Batty, Rachael and K’s girlfriend, Joi (Ana de Armas), and Eldon Tyrell – the original creator of the Replicants – and Niander Wallace. While not carbon copies of each other, they have enough in common to explain the occasional sense of déjà vu.

If there’s one aspect of the film I was fascinated by, it was K’s relationship with Joi, for it expands our understanding of love and its possibilities. Every time the relationship was explored, I was fascinated by it. Here are two things, one physical and one virtual, that find in each other a reason for being beyond their programmed duties. They demonstrate the ever changing nature of AI technology and illustrate that all things have an unmistakable need for companionship, even if they are not sure what to do with it when they find it. It is a reminder that love’s boundries are continually breaking, giving rise to something that often transcends space and tangibility. I could have watched an entire movie on their relationship.

Alas, that is not the film we get. Instead, we get one that never quite justifies its existence. We certainly didn’t need to know what Deckard was up to thirty years later, and while the film is well-acted and technically accomplished, nothing we see seems novel anymore. We’ve seen the depressing sights of a utopian society, we’ve watched films that ask us to reconsider our long-standing views on love, and we’ve seen someone race to find a child said to be the key to the world’s future. What we haven’t seen is the fate of Rachael and Deckard. Check that. We thought we did. Now we see the official updated version, and to tell you truth, it’s all a bit narratively underwhelming. (on DVD and Blu-ray)

2 and a half stars

Review - Lars and the Real Girl

July 6, 2017

Lars and the Real Girl – US, 2007

In Craig Gillespie’s Lars and the Real Girl, there is an important scene missing, the one I refer to as the establishment. In the establishment, the audience receives valuable information about one or more characters that is then used to compare or contrast these characters, or just to make sense of events or actions that occur later on in a film. Such a scene may set up a personality flaw, establish a close or strained friendship, or explain the rules through which we should comprehend the action that follows. For example, think of the opening scene of 2009’s The Proposal, during which we get an excellent look at the pressure of a woman’s staff and their fear of making a mistake. Think of the opening scene of Blade, which establishes just what makes Blade different from other vampires, or the closing scene of Pulp Fiction, which establishes some of the motives and relationships that characters had earlier in the film. This is the kind of scene missing in Lars and the Real Girl.

To be fair, the film attempts one. In its opening scene, we watch as Lars stares out his window at the home in which his brother, Gus, and his wife, Karen, live. Karen soon emerges, and as she notices Lars through the window, he ducks away, hoping that she didn’t see him or, if she did, that she quietly goes away. The conversation that follows, if you want to call it that, is brief and filled with moments of immensely awkward silence, one person trying to start a conversation and the other trying to avoid one. The scene does its job. It establishes Lars as withdrawn, quiet, and awkward around people, which makes sense given what he does later on in the film. What it does not do, however, is explain why everyone comes to his defense later on or demonstrate why he is the object of someone’s affection.

Lars comes out of his shell during an interesting scene in which he first tantalizes his sister-in-law with news that he has found romance with a woman named Bianca and then leaves her and Gus speechless when they see that Bianca is actually a doll – not the inflatable kind, but one of those realistic, anatomically correct ones sold online, the stereotype goes, to men with abnormal fetishes or severe problems relating to members of the opposite sex. A film about that would likely be rather dark and somewhat off-putting, and I’m willing to bet that very few people are willing to go there. Rest assured then. Lars and the Real Girl keeps the relationship relatively tame. Bianca stays at Gus and Karen’s home because it isn’t proper for them to share a bed so soon in their relationship, and when they are alone, Lars is content to regale her with tales of his childhood; in his eyes, to do anything less would be uncivilized.

So Lars and the Real Girl is a G-rated version of an R-rated phenomenon, and in truth there’s nothing necessarily wrong with this. However, at a time when newspapers print articles on Japanese men who prefer the company of life-like dolls than actual people and many young people find it increasingly difficult to communicate with people with words and facial expressions, it is not the film that we need. We need a film about reaching the detached and pulling back those that have become reliant upon -and confused by- cartoon fantasies, video games, and the promise of the online soul mate. Lars and the Real Girl isn’t this film.

Instead, it is one about a nice guy, the supportive townspeople he encounters, and his peculiar way of working out his problems. And that is just what the film claims Lars is doing – creating his own delusion and then working out some pretty powerful issues by resolving the delusion. As his doctor explains, “It will be over when he’d done with it.” In other words, ordering a doll online, giving it a backstory, falling in love with it, and then falling out of love with it are all just parts of one therapeutic process, just the human brain working it all out. It sounds nice; I just didn’t buy it.

This is certainly no fault of the cast. Ryan Gosling is thoroughly convincing as Lars, and Patricia Clarkson is a revelation as a family doctor who treats Lars in between her “treatments” of a very sick Bianca. Emily Mortinson and Paul Schneider are fine as Karen and Gus, and Kelli Garner is downright sweet and endearing as Margo, the co-worker with a crush on Lars. And if you accept that the town bands together to get Lars through a tough time by humoring his delusion, you are apt to find Lars and the Real Girl a pleasant comedy.

But let’s return to the missing establishment. Lars is never shown to have been a people person. He is never shown to be someone people cherished or would rally behind, and no one person utters an admission like “While Lars may be a freak, he is still our freak.” Also, nothing suggests that there was more to Lars than the quiet guy who turns down invitations to dinner or feels pain at the slightest touch. In other words, just who is Lars supposed to turn back into or be when the delusion is over? Such as explanation would justify Margo’s deep attachment to Lars and make us root for their eventual relationship. As the film is now, I kept asking myself why she liked him so much. Was it because of how he treated a mannequin, and just what does it mean if that’s the case? Sadly, the film does not explore these issues.

In the end, I liked Lars and the Real Girl. It’s a film that almost impossible to dislike entirely, especially with such a collection of extremely amiable characters. Yet it’s also a film that takes the easy road. It neither challenges the audience’s impression of the mentally ill nor gives them a new definition of normal. To be sure, the film has its heart in the right place and it has all of the ingredients of a great story. It just doesn’t know what to do with them, and so it content to play it safe. Everyone is decent, and Lars will be okay in the end. It is a family-friendly message, one that unfortunately struck me as particularly convenient. (on DVD and Blu-ray)

2 and a half stars