'Blade Runner 2049' Review: A $150 Million Pleasure Model With a Brain

Before a recent press screening of Blade Runner 2049, a representative from Warner Bros. read a note from Denis Villeneuve, in which the director politely asked those assembled to preserve the film's many secrets. It's a reasonable request, but a difficult one, as any discussion of 2049 is bound to involve spoiler-spilling queries, many of them existential. And, perhaps, the most pressing head-scratcher of all: Just how the hell does Harrison Ford get his arms to look like that? The actor's formidable 75-year-old limbs--bulging with squiggly veins, and just itching to swing--get a fair amount of screen-time in Blade Runner: 2049, Villeneuve's sweeping, deeply affecting new sci-fi drama, and the sequel to Ridley Scott's future-redefining 1982 original. That film marked Ford's first appearance as Rick Deckard, a lean, oft-tipsy, emotionally akimbo Los Angeles robot-hunter tasked with tracking down on-the-lam androids (or "replicants").