Blade Runner 2049

Building a Better Replicant
or
"Is It Real?" "I Dunno. Ask Him."

Prejudices out front: the original Blade Runner is, to me, a beautiful, fascinating, very watchable failure. All of those aspects land at the feet of director Ridley Scott, who directed it to a high, gritty gloss, while not understanding the source material or its theme...at all. That's the frustrating thing about the man. Blade Runner has a troubled history—on its initial release, studio butterflies forced concessions (the narration, which, as a device doesn't seem out of place in a noir-landscape, but the horribly written final version of it was insulting), and Scott has spent 30 years "Lucasing" it to conform with his idea that its main character, the "blade runner"—a title which was bought from another sci-fi property and has nothing to do with Philip K. Dick's original story* or the film (it just "felt" edgy, kids)—was, actually, himself, a replicant, charged with killing other replicants. I don't know why Scott came to that conclusion, other than he liked replicants better than human beings, or he was put off by Harrison Ford's human Deckard boinking Sean Young's android Rachael, or it might be a reaction to the fractious relationship he had with his star while filming. Who knows? I've always found Scott's contention thuddingly stupid, but that's what you get when you're more concerned with the fluff in the air than the words on the page.**

After years of parsing out the legal rights to do it, Scott has executive-produced the much-anticipated sequel, Blade Runner 2049, with a script by the original's Hampton Fancher and flavor-of-the-month script-doctor Michael Green, its original star, Ford (and a couple others we won't discuss), and a new director Denis Villenueve (Arrival), another director adept at visuals if not the best handle on story. Blade Runner 2049 shows him able to tell a compelling story with a strong visionary sense (replacing Scott's vision with the help of cinemagician Roger Deakins), but adhering to the same landscape of an American wasteland, scarred by acid-rain and out-of-control corporate tyranny, where workers are shipped off to "off-world" colonies, supplemented by the latest slave-supply, manufactured androids, called "replicants."

In the world of Blade Runner 2049, cities are dimly lit by solar farms—the priority, presumably, to keep the "Pan-Am" and "Atari" neon signs lit (a neat little call-back to the original as those companies are as buried as "Batty")—and androids are now outnumbering humans on Earth, and—what Scott first (eventually) envisioned in the original that the replicants would soon eat their own—are being employed as police "blade runners" to kill off the replicants that have exceeded their expiration date. We see LAPD officer KD6-3.7 (Ryan Gosling, in his circumspect "you have to read the emotions, I'm not going to show them" mode) taking out a "Nexus-8" model named Sapper (Dave Bautista, who is turning into a curiously intricate actor) and not reacting at all when he gets knifed in the shoulder during the fracas. He's a replicant, alright.

Surveillance of Sapper's isolated protein farm finds that a box has been buried under the property's single dead tree—why would he keep that, and prop it up long after its death (empathy?)—and Sapper's cryptic comment "You've never seen a miracle" are the odd loose ends for the "retirement." He's recalled to the LAPD, and there Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) gives him "a talk", the type of talk a superior gives their street-cop when there's some exposition to be made and context to be given, but the gist is that he's a replicant and he's there to do a job and that job is to keep the replicants in their place as workers, separate from humans, and any replicant that tries to achieve more and go past its usefulness will be put down. Humans get to live, replicants get to serve...but only for a time. You are now caught up with the original Blade Runner, so, no, it's not mandatory to have seen it to get anything out of this one, except for some incidentals.

But, that box. Analysis shows that it holds the remains of a replicant female, dead of mysterious causes that don't make sense, the manufactured bones carefully arranged, like a form of shrine and the tree bare except for a date inscribed in it—a date that stirs something in Officer K. It's a mystery buried inside a mystery and the implications disturb Joshi, who tells K. to forget about it and go home. 

"How was your day, honey?"

It's here that I should probably stop with any detailed rundown of the film, because if I do, there will be some spoilage of surprises, some of which are pretty damn clever and their "reveals" are done quite nicely. I will say that if a replicant is the supplicant to a human, it would stand to reason that replicants would have them, too. But, in what manner would that be, what form would it take, and what would the possibilities be in the interaction between two such forms of life? Where does programming end and uniqueness begin? It was part of the "otherness" of the original and Blade Runner 2049 takes it one more level to an ironic and melancholy conclusion.

Along the way, several complications have occurred. An electromagnetic pulse discharged in the atmosphere in 2022 rendered the records previous to that time unusable—convenient for slowing down the plot, but not so inconvenient that somebody can't be found to trace things back to their source and even replay old software records. San Diego has become a citywide dumping ground. And Las Vegas, an irradiated ghost-town. The Tyrell Corporation went bankrupt after the death of its founder at the thumbs of one of his creations (in the original), necessitating the disposal of that line in favor of the more advanced "Nexus-8" replicants, and acquired in a buy-out by one Niander Wallace (Jared Leto), a visionary with a singular lack of vision, given to internecine plots to keep his supply to the "off-world" colonies (we're never sure where that might be, but it has to be close as it's just 2049) and as good as he is at the manufacturing of replicants, he can't seem to keep up with demand. Coincidentally, the discovery by the LAPD of the replicant bones may solve the issue, and so he sends his assistant, Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) to keep a close eye on the investigation, even to the point of stealing the evidence.

K's investigation sends him to San Diego to meet a manufacturer of replicant memories (Carla Juri) and, ultimately, to a deserted Las Vegas where he tracks down an old blade runner, Deckard (Harrison Ford), who knows more than he's telling. The path leads K down a couple of blind alleys, but by this time, it's personal and he finds himself confronted by the past, and what could very well be his past. At this point, after the elaborate set-up of the previous couple hours (the film is 2 hours 40 minutes long), the film gets simultaneously better (Ford's back! And the film-makers have a grand time playing with Vegas) and worse (a lot of de rigeur action stuff and a couple gaping plot-holes, but then, what's a Blade Runner movie without them?).

Now, some generalized thoughts about the movie without going into the plot details that produce them. One thing about the first movie that Replicants may have a similar physiognomy, but it is never made clear about what runs them, but one thing is made clear in the original—they seem to wear what can be construed as their heart on their sleeves. Their very capacity for feeling, for appreciating life, because their's is so short, is what make them different from the relatively uncaring, shall we say "privileged" human beings who take their longevity, comparatively speaking, for granted. One thing about the first that never really gelled for me is its dressing itself up in the trappings of film-noir. That aspect doesn't really work other than the darkness that permeates the screen. There is no greater evil in human (or replicant) nature in that story that that darkness represents. But, Blade Runner 2049 does have that aspect at least as it relates to the main characters in the story, K and Deckard. 

For K, the decidedly replicant blade runner, the investigation is a journey of discovery. He starts out as a cog in a machine of authority and as he gets deeper into the mystery, he begins to see himself as something more, maybe even unique. His feelings are pushed and pulled, one way and another, during the course of the film, but one thing that humanizes him (if you can use so precious a term) is his relationship and very real affection for his house-mate/partner (can we call her that?), Joi (Ana de Armas), who cares for him, as he does for her, in kind. It is the closest relationship displayed in the movie. But is it love? Is it caring? Can it be named, as such? For both of them, it is real. But, in the course of the movie, K comes to question what that relationship is. As with one of my favorite films about the subject, Hitchcock's Vertigo, at the end of Blade Runner 2049 you question—as the song goes—"what is this thing called 'love.'"

At the end, K is given a much darker truth that changes his mission and makes him take the actions that will finish the film, acts of self-sacrifice done in the despair that what he might have treasured is not so special a thing at all, but will make him fight for what he sees as genuine—not unlike Roy Batty at the end of the original Blade Runner. His world is rocked by the negation of his hope of uniqueness, and he is given a damning realization that he is just part of a bigger system of manipulation, commodified and cheapened by corporate interests, and he is left with nothing of value, other than what he can do to make his life worth...something. 

There is a larger evil in the world that he is powerless against it, and, indeed, he's part of it. And he's an artificial life, a manufactured copy, a simulation of his human masters. How would such a being feel about that? As with the original, it makes me wonder about the relationship between us and our machines. We all name our cars (don't we? Please tell me you do, too), or "personalize" our computers. Is that a way of grafting affection, producing a partnership? It makes me occasionally wonder if my kitchen micro-wave might be grieving that the plastic has worn away from the "Start" button and sees that as neglect. The "Toy Story" series played with that (especially Toy Story 2). So, did Spielberg's (and Kubrick's) A.I.

And Deckard? I still contend that he's human...or else, what's the point? But the film changes him, as well...and the original film, without altering what went before. But, he discovers that, instead of being a rebel, he was nothing more than a lab rat, and maybe that's the difference between human and replicant—he can live with that, as long as he lives.

Blade Runner 2049 is flawed—sure, it is. But, I find it better than the original, one of a handful of sequels that can boast that, certainly in that it, and its director, knows what it's doing. It takes the original, deconstructs it, expands on it, and ends up being more truthful to its source material than its own adaptation.  It makes you think, and like any really good film in the tradition of film-noir, not in a good way.

* "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?" Have you read it? You should.

** This may seem minor to Blade Runner fans, but is essential to the story's theme about the mechanical replicants teaching the human killer what it means to be human. And Scott's tinkering with the film over the years—the insertion of a unicorn dream (which actually "plays" when contemplating a replicant's uniqueness—or the fragility of a life), the reflective qualities of a replicant's eyes—which is given to Deckard, the suggestiveness of the origami figure Deckard is left by his fellow officer Gaff, and the implication that Deckard, like all replicants—has been implanted with memories—to maintain that Ford's Deckard is a replicant (despite the character's all-too-human flailing about in the film) renders that central theme empty and useless. It's like saying that Charles Foster Kane's last words implies that he mourns the loss of snow rather than the carefree childhood, implied by his sled, that was lost when he was signed over to Thatcher by his parents.

*** During its gestation or production phase, at one point, the rumored "Blade Runner" sequel was to be a series of shorts, either for the web or TV. The seeds of that idea came to fruition with three commissioned "prequel" shorts, which are below, courtesy of Warner Brothers' YouTube channel.

Captain Philips

Written at the time of the film's release.

Shakin' the Cam/Rockin' the Boat
or
"Everything's Going to Be Okay"

Paul Greengrass, who has succeeded in bringing a visceral documentary feel to even his fiction films (The Bourne Supremacy/Ultimatum, The Green Zone) is back in "Based on a True Story" territory with Captain Phillips, which is about the 2009 cargo ship taken over by Somali pirates, which, in the course of events, resulted in its titular captain being taken hostage for ransom.

Currently, some of the crew of the hijacked cargo ship are in the midst of a multi-million dollar lawsuit with the Maersk line over the events and "in the press" are disparaging the movie's events and the character of Phillips ("anonymously" for legal reasons—as most heroes would do it) now that the movie is released.  Their peril was stopped hours after it began.  At that point, their safety was assured and the drama stopped. Phillips was stuck in a lifeboat with the pirates for a few days more, and faced an untenable situation that only seemed to worsen as the hours went on.*

Anyway, a lot of bad-mouthing about Phillips being portrayed as a hero in this situation. He's not (although the resulting PR feeding-frenzy-makers like to bandy the word "hero" about at the slightest positive act). He's a victim, more passive than aggressive, trying to survive the situation as much as possible. That much is clear. Earlier this week, we'd did a review about truth and fiction and the compromises film-makers make to save time, money and confusion. We're not willing to go over the same territory twice in one week.

So, how's the movie?

It's quite good, in that edge-of-your-seat uneasiness way. The drama—and melodrama—comes from the "unknown" factors and the "wild card" desperation of the pirates themselves (they're portrayed as excitable, drug-addled** child-men with no other options), simmering at the boiling-point that only intensifies when the scene shifts from the vast cargo ship to the tiny lifeboat that Phillips and the hijackers occupy for the next few days, while the ship's crewmen, the shipping company, and the Navy get their respective acts together. Those expecting a quick-cutting flying fist-fest ala "Bourne" are going to slunk away with pouty-mouths—there ain't that much action here, and when the film gets really good, there's no room for any. No, most of the movie is a waiting game, everybody waiting for an opportunity to make a killing, one way or another. And if something doesn't go anybody's way, there's an escalation of a few seconds until things calm down, then there's a lag where we're waiting for something to go wrong again, and it does...so that the film is an emotional roller-coaster ride for the audience (other than the evidence that Capt. Rich Phillips has his picture all over the place seeming very much alive).

Barkhad Abdi as the de facto leader of the pirates.
Nominated for a Best Supporting Actor, I'd like to see more of this guy.

So much of the film depends on the presence of Hanks in the starring role; we spend the most time with him and the actors portraying the Somali's, who have the same sense of menace throughout (although some pains are made to make sure that Barkhad Abdi's ring-leader, Muse, is set apart from the others—the others come down to "the driver," "the injured kid," and "the wild-eyed crazy one").  

It recalls a story about the marketing of Apollo 13, which originally had a poster of the perilous situation—the spacecraft leaking oxygen going around the dark side of the Moon—but fearing for their investment, the producers opted for one that had Tom Hanks front and center in a claustrophobic layout. The reason for this being that audiences might not care for the situation depicted in the earlier poster, but if there's a poster where Tom Hanks is worried that he's in trouble, that might bring a sympathetic audience in, hoping that the popular actor would attract a crowd. And so the actor-specific poster (despite an all-star cast) was substituted. One wonders if it might be the same reason that Executive Producer Kevin Spacey is not portraying Phillips; maybe folks wouldn't worry about Spacey so much, but Hanks' every-man persona might make a monetary difference at the box office. 

In any case, Hanks does a fairly good job at maintaining a veneer of calm while an undercurrent of panic roils through him. But where he really shines—to the point where it's amazing to see—is the way he projects the character's shock at the end of the film, and one has to applaud Hanks for displaying a total break-down without once making us recall his crying for a volleyball.*** Despite his reputation as a male version of America's sweetheart, he is a good enough actor to still surprise and move, over one's objections.

* My first question to those union sailors would be "If Phillips died, would you still be pursuing the lawsuit?" They're damned if they would, and damned if they wouldn't.

** In the film, they're constantly chewing khat.

*** That would be his loony-toons turn in Cast Away.  If I had a nickel...

Eye in the Sky

The Nail
or
Attack of the Drones: Showing Your Collateral

Patton loathed the modern age of warfare (circa 20th Century), not just in the movie bearing his name, but in his real life, too. Patton yearned for the era of the personal warrior, battles fought mano a mano. He learned tank strategies at West Point, devised some of them himself, but generally despaired of mechanized warfare and fantasized taking on Rommel in a one on one tank fight, like jousters. Push-button warfare, he saw no point to it, certainly no glory, certainly no triumph.

Patton was a bit crazy, but he had a point.  No triumph also means no responsibility. You can't wash your hands from a killing. Ask Pontius Pilate. Ask Lady Macbeth. No matter how far removed you may place yourself, culpability is still there. In the 40's Humphrey Bogart's characters sarcastically derided "push-button killers...killing by remote-control" especially when he was being written by Howard Hawks. His opinion usually earned a drink thrown in his face—or worse—for the remark, as it implied cowardice, shirking off responsibility.

Modern warfare (in the 21st Century) is conducted by drones, and one could look at that as killing by remote control, if one wanted to over-simplify it. But, as the new film by Gavin Hood (X-Men Origins: Wolverine—but don't hold it against him—and Ender's Game, rather appropriately) Eye in the Sky, shows it is hardly removed from responsibility. It takes place over twelve hours, focusing on one military operation, dubbed "Operation Egret," focusing on an Al Shebaab terrorist cell in Nairobi, Kenya that has been under surveillance for several months by British military forces, the operation headed by Col. Katherine Powell (Helen Mirren). 

This particular group, made up of Kenyan, American and British fanatics with murder on their minds, is being monitored as they come from various parts of the globe to converge on one house in a small Nairobi neighborhood. What they're planning is not known, but, given their collective history, it can't be good. 

The plan is to remove them from the terror equation by capturing them and separate teams from around the globe are pressed to this purpose: In Surrey, Col. Powell heads the direct operation; at Permanent Joint Headquarters in North London the situation is being overseen by the Foreign Ministry and by Lt. General Frank Benson (Alan Rickman in what will be his last filmed performance), AG George Matherson (Richard McCabe), and observers Brian Woodale (Jeremy Northam) and Angela Northam (Monica Dolan)—their parts must have been described in the script as "insufferable bleeding hearts"; drone flight operations originate in Creech Air Force Base near Las Vegas, the pilots being 2nd Lieutenant Steve Watts (Aaron Paul) and Carrie Gershon (Phoebe Fox); charged with imaging intel at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii is Lucy Galvez (Kim Engelbrecht).

Oh, for the local angle, the "boots on the ground" are headed by Major Moses Owiti (Vusi Kunene), with close surveillance by Damisi (Ebby Weyime), she of the "hummingbird-cam" and Jama Farah (Barkhad Abdi of Captain Philips), he of the "beetle-cam," who employ these ludicrous little surveillance systems to get extraordinarily close views of the terrorists.

Then, there are the Mo'Allim family, who live in the same block as the terrorist safe-house—Fatima (Faissa Hassan), Musa (Armaan Haggio) and 8 year old Alia (Aisha Takow), who studies behind shuttered windows away from the disapproving eyes of Al Shebaab thugs. Allah knows what they'd do if they knew that she rocks a hula-hoop.

Aliah will be the focus of concern for all of the eyes in the sky, as her daily chore is to walk to a corner table and sell the bread her mother bakes. Today, her spare little stand is in a kill-zone, watched around the world and discussed in urgent tones, especially when the surveillance shows that the safe-house meeting is for the pre-blast meeting of a suicide bomber. As the C4 is unwrapped in a back bedroom, the "capture" scenario is upgraded to a "kill" scenario, the troops are ordered to stand down, and the reconnaissance drone is brought to bear as a missile launcher. The clock ticks down and the discussions go up levels of responsibility to the PM. Then the US, who is monitoring—they monitor EVERYBODY—butts in to remind that these Al Shebaabers are, after all, No's 3, 4 and 5 on the East Africa Most Wanted list, and how often do you get to pull a "hat-trick?"

The conversations turn slightly "Strangelovely" with talk of 45% versus 65% "kill probabilities," "real war" versus "propaganda war" victories, and "kill-chains," but the reality is those hovering pictures and the little girl with the bread-stand. A savage balance is weighed—her life versus the lives of the potential victims of the suicide bomber. The piloters in Vegas have their orders—if there's a 50% chance (or greater) that civilians will be killed (the "collateral assessment"), they can't launch—or, more appropriately, can go "by the book" and countermand the generals and refuse. And their evidence is on the same screen every one is looking at. That is more than a little unprecedented in modern warfare. It is certainly a far cry from "chateau generals," far removed from the repercussions of their orders. It is real. It is now. And the entire kill-chain of command must stare into the face of death, whether they're satisfied with the results or not.

I mentioned Dr. Strangelove earlier. This is more like Fail-Safe, warfare conducted in closed rooms, but, as opposed to that film, with the hand-wringing kept to a minimum (in the movie, but the film is tense enough to produce that result in an audience). Concentrated, focused, it is like a great BBC drama compressed into a taut, tense 90 minutes. Hood doesn't mess a lot with Guy Hibbert's screenplay, doesn't over-complicate it. He lets the situation and the superb crew of actors, some new, some veterans, do all the heavy lifting (one amazing bit of trivia is that the film was shot entirely in Hood's home country of South Africa).

Performances are universally good, although a bit too teary-eyed in places for professional soldiers, especially if it's more than their first week on duty. Mirren is back in her "Prime Suspect" phase with a chip on her shoulder that almost makes her hunch-backed. Paul cool and assured, even under duress, with his finger on the trigger, I was surprised by my delight at seeing Agbi, who's too keen a presence to disappear after his Oscar-nominated performance for Phillips.

And then, there's Rickman. The man died January 14th of this year and the film is dedicated to him. He also has the best, most multi-layered line (which he delivers with the cold, nuanced melancholy he excelled at), effectively ending the film as it hangs in the mind, not only because of the way it reflects on the entire film, but also in the way his reading of it complicates its wording, echoing, echoing, echoing. Eye in the Sky is provocative enough, one hopes it's not remembered solely for being his final visual bow, but he couldn't have had a better exit line.