Ghost In The Shell
At some stage in the future, Major (Scarlet Johansson) has had her brain and consciousness transplanted into a robot body following an accident in which she drowned. She works for Hanka Robotics and sets after a mystery criminal hell bent on murdering everyone involved in the corporation. But all is very much not as it seems.
The film is based around a Japanese manga series, which later became a hugely popular anime film. I'm not in a position to judge to what extent it is faithful to the source material and there have been complaints about the "whitewashing" of the central character. My only real comment there is that if you're going to do a Hollywood/westernised version involving a half robot woman, Johansson is the obvious choice and she frequently conveys a sense of detachment and distance that you would expect from her character.
Deference is shown to the story's roots and it's clearly still meant to be set in futuristic Japan, although there is a revelation in the second half that might be considered problematic to a certain audience. The film is visually distinctive, with holograms bursting out from buildings amongst other nice flourishes. For the most part, the fight sequences are also entertaining, with nods to the balletic style of combat commonly seen in movies from the Far East.
The film initially sets up some intriguing questions and an interesting premise. Would it be desirable to transplant your consciousness into a "shell" so you could theoretically live forever? In what sense would you still be "you"? How would such technology function? How could it potentially be manipulated? It ultimately loses its nerve and what we end with is something like a revenge thriller featuring lines like "Our memories don't define us, what we do defines us", one of those statements which feels profound but is ultimately meaningless. Ghost In The Shell is a stylish film, but it could have been so much more.
The film is based around a Japanese manga series, which later became a hugely popular anime film. I'm not in a position to judge to what extent it is faithful to the source material and there have been complaints about the "whitewashing" of the central character. My only real comment there is that if you're going to do a Hollywood/westernised version involving a half robot woman, Johansson is the obvious choice and she frequently conveys a sense of detachment and distance that you would expect from her character.
Deference is shown to the story's roots and it's clearly still meant to be set in futuristic Japan, although there is a revelation in the second half that might be considered problematic to a certain audience. The film is visually distinctive, with holograms bursting out from buildings amongst other nice flourishes. For the most part, the fight sequences are also entertaining, with nods to the balletic style of combat commonly seen in movies from the Far East.
The film initially sets up some intriguing questions and an interesting premise. Would it be desirable to transplant your consciousness into a "shell" so you could theoretically live forever? In what sense would you still be "you"? How would such technology function? How could it potentially be manipulated? It ultimately loses its nerve and what we end with is something like a revenge thriller featuring lines like "Our memories don't define us, what we do defines us", one of those statements which feels profound but is ultimately meaningless. Ghost In The Shell is a stylish film, but it could have been so much more.
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