☆☆½
Has no one in the future seen Young Frankenstein? Do they not realize how risky it is to put a human brain into another body, whether one fresh from a grave or manufactured by machine? Have they not heard of Abby Normal?
Sure, at one point in Ghost in the Shell, the calm, quiet, not-at-all-mad scientist played by Juliette Binoche tells her creation, played by Scarlett Johansson, that there were 98 attempts to create a hybrid human-robot before her.
Ninety-eight? I've heard of PowerPoint presentations with fewer drafts. Yet, on the 99th try, the sinister ultra-mega-industrial conglomerate Hanka has successfully taken a human brain and put it into a cyborg body. But why would this be a good idea? What if, instead of the skillful brain of The Major, as Johansson's character is know, they had gotten the brain of, say, Woody Allen or Meryl Streep, and rather than shoot weapons and fight The Major had just wanted to make a doctor's appointment to see about the rash on her arm, or to become a high-quality actress?
Somehow, though, the doctor and Hanka -- a shadowy criminal enterprise, because no other kind of big company exists in action movies -- luck out, and they get a brain that can be trained to think and act like a precision machine, one that is manufactured through a process that is almost exactly like the one in the TV version of Westworld. There are other similarities to Westworld, as well as to Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, like the "glitches" that The Major experiences -- flashes of her life before her brain was taken from her body and put in a Scarlett Johansson robot.
After a year of training to be an assassin-slash-vigilante, The Major gets her first assignment, which is to track down a mysterious man named Kuze, who has been engaging in cyber-attacks against Hanka. Aided by a vicious guy with a tender heart (Pilou Asbaek), who ends up with the movie's best cyborg parts, she tracks down Kuze and begins to realize that she might not be as clear on her own history as she thought she was.
The Major's search for her sense of self is the best thing about Ghost in the Shell, even though it recalls so many other robots-with-human-feelings stories, including the compelling British TV series Humans, not to mention A.I. and Blade Runner, which is this film's biggest and most obvious visual influence -- to the point of distraction, actually. It's to Johansson's credit that the middle portion of Ghost in the Shell is more compelling than it should be. This isn't at all new territory, and Ghost in the Shell really has nothing new to say about the fine line between humanity and technology, a line that seems to be getting finer and finer every day.
As someone with absolutely no familiarity with the original manga comic or the 1995 animated film that came before this one, Ghost in the Shell intrigued me with its observations on the meaning of personal memory and kept me interested with its visuals -- at times, they look too much like Blade Runner for comfort, down to the always-rainy, overly grungy underworld of its near-future, hyper-techno urban cityscapes. But its over-reliance on guns, gangsters and generic action scenes, especially a ridiculously bombastic and frenetic climax, had my eyes glazing over at times.
There are too many ghosts in the shell of this film, the cinematic ghosts of robots and dystopian futures we've seen so many times before. Johansson and Binoche do particularly fine jobs at keeping the ghosts at bay, but they're always there, lurking on the sides. They haunt the film a bit too deeply, leaving Ghost in the Shell not without its merits but incapable of overcoming the same sensation that The Major has throughout much of the movie: We've seen this before.
Viewed March 28, 2017 -- Paramount Theater
1930
Sure, at one point in Ghost in the Shell, the calm, quiet, not-at-all-mad scientist played by Juliette Binoche tells her creation, played by Scarlett Johansson, that there were 98 attempts to create a hybrid human-robot before her.
Ninety-eight? I've heard of PowerPoint presentations with fewer drafts. Yet, on the 99th try, the sinister ultra-mega-industrial conglomerate Hanka has successfully taken a human brain and put it into a cyborg body. But why would this be a good idea? What if, instead of the skillful brain of The Major, as Johansson's character is know, they had gotten the brain of, say, Woody Allen or Meryl Streep, and rather than shoot weapons and fight The Major had just wanted to make a doctor's appointment to see about the rash on her arm, or to become a high-quality actress?
Somehow, though, the doctor and Hanka -- a shadowy criminal enterprise, because no other kind of big company exists in action movies -- luck out, and they get a brain that can be trained to think and act like a precision machine, one that is manufactured through a process that is almost exactly like the one in the TV version of Westworld. There are other similarities to Westworld, as well as to Paul Verhoeven's Robocop, like the "glitches" that The Major experiences -- flashes of her life before her brain was taken from her body and put in a Scarlett Johansson robot.
After a year of training to be an assassin-slash-vigilante, The Major gets her first assignment, which is to track down a mysterious man named Kuze, who has been engaging in cyber-attacks against Hanka. Aided by a vicious guy with a tender heart (Pilou Asbaek), who ends up with the movie's best cyborg parts, she tracks down Kuze and begins to realize that she might not be as clear on her own history as she thought she was.
The Major's search for her sense of self is the best thing about Ghost in the Shell, even though it recalls so many other robots-with-human-feelings stories, including the compelling British TV series Humans, not to mention A.I. and Blade Runner, which is this film's biggest and most obvious visual influence -- to the point of distraction, actually. It's to Johansson's credit that the middle portion of Ghost in the Shell is more compelling than it should be. This isn't at all new territory, and Ghost in the Shell really has nothing new to say about the fine line between humanity and technology, a line that seems to be getting finer and finer every day.
As someone with absolutely no familiarity with the original manga comic or the 1995 animated film that came before this one, Ghost in the Shell intrigued me with its observations on the meaning of personal memory and kept me interested with its visuals -- at times, they look too much like Blade Runner for comfort, down to the always-rainy, overly grungy underworld of its near-future, hyper-techno urban cityscapes. But its over-reliance on guns, gangsters and generic action scenes, especially a ridiculously bombastic and frenetic climax, had my eyes glazing over at times.
There are too many ghosts in the shell of this film, the cinematic ghosts of robots and dystopian futures we've seen so many times before. Johansson and Binoche do particularly fine jobs at keeping the ghosts at bay, but they're always there, lurking on the sides. They haunt the film a bit too deeply, leaving Ghost in the Shell not without its merits but incapable of overcoming the same sensation that The Major has throughout much of the movie: We've seen this before.
Viewed March 28, 2017 -- Paramount Theater
1930
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