Starring: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis Director: Denis Villeneuve

A ravishing visual colossus, “Blade Runner 2049” more than lives up to its predecessor’s legacy as a groundbreaking mixture of sound, imagery and mood. This long-anticipated sequel’s screenplay sometimes struggles to keep pace, but director Denis Villeneuve has crafted an enrapturing sci-fi dystopia whose themes and emotions are so vividly realized cinematically that it hardly matters when the actual story isn’t quite as engaging. A superbly muted performance from Ryan Gosling grounds this solemn exploration of identity and what it means to be human.

Opening across most of the globe this week, “Blade Runner 2049” will be a must-see for sci-fi dystopia genre fans — not to mention lovers of gorgeous widescreen compositions. Gosling isn’t a sure-fire draw — although he’s still coming down from his biggest hit with “La La Land” — while co-star Harrison Ford has enjoyed a commercial renaissance thanks to “The Force Awakens.”

Set 30 years after “Blade Runner,” “2049” follows K (Gosling), a Los Angeles Blade Runner who is assigned to eliminate runaway replicants: lifelike androids meant to serve humans.

K is a more advanced model of replicant permitted to work alongside people while tracking down his own kind, an arrangement that makes him a pariah. (Humans are repulsed by him, while his fellow replicants consider him a traitor.) His latest mission leads him towards a potentially shattering discovery — proof that a female replicant managed to reproduce — and puts him on a collision course with Deckard (Ford), the former Blade Runner who went missing decades ago.

The original “Blade Runner” popularized several sci-fi tropes — the fear of a bleak future, the possibility that our technology could enslave us, the question of what constitutes consciousness — which have become genre commonplace. As a result, “Blade Runner 2049” can’t help but sometimes feel like an echo — not just of its predecessor but also of film’s successors. (Plot points and scenes unconsciously reference everything from “Her” to “Wall-E,” which all harken back to the 1982 movie.)

“Blade Runner 2049” moves across several different locations — everything from a densely populated Los Angeles to desert terrain to an abandoned nightclub — which helps keep visual monotony at bay. Without belaboring its points, the film speaks to issues of isolation, conformity, loss and heroism entirely through Villeneuve’s striking compositions, which forgo the noirish elements of Ridley Scott’s 1982 film but preserve the original’s icy despair.

Gosling marshals the same melancholy stillness he utilized as the stoic loner in “Drive,” although K’s emotional journey in “Blade Runner 2049” is far trickier and, ultimately, more bittersweet. Audiences have seen plenty of robot characters who struggle to locate their souls, but Gosling conveys K’s internal turmoil with the sparingest of movements, suggesting a replicant only slowly coming to grips with his humanity. He’s well paired with Ana de Armas, who plays a computer-simulation girlfriend who, like K, is limited by her programming and a slave to her masters.

Like the original, “Blade Runner 2049” is largely a detective story, focusing more on reveals and twists than huge action sequences. With a running time close to three hours, the movie makes room for digressions and side characters, happily taking major narrative risks in pursuit of delivering a bold, provocative blockbuster that’s more sombre than its frenetic peers.

The movie is now being screened in Shenzhen.

(SD-Agencies)