Ghost In The Shell

(★★★★✩)

THE essence of the cyberpunk genre, a place where science fiction melds seamlessly with noirish elements, returns in Rupert Sanders’s adaptation of Shirow Masamune’s and Mamoru Oshii’s eponymous manga and anime, respectively.

A visually stunning experience, the film is set in a futuristic society where technology and humanity have merged – in which a cyber-terrorist has found a new and particularly nasty method of killing innocents by hacking their minds.

An anti-terrorist division known as Section 9 sends its best operative, the cybernetically-enhanced Major Motoko (Scarlett Johansson) to investigate, but by doing so, the Major uncovers some secrets that she did not know she had.

It’s clear Sanders is substantially gifted in his visuals than he is with his characters as the film is ultimately a thematically shallow affair that goes nowhere near as seminal as its source materials. However, the film is hugely respectable towards its origins, with Sanders and his writers lovingly retaining their themes of humanity and technology merging at a price, albeit on Hollywood’s fast-food level of intelligence.

Johansson, whose casting is getting far more controversy in the West, is sufficiently tough and sensible enough to ground the film in plausibility.

A late-act plot reveal which explores the Major’s past is a bold strategy that will certainly offend a lot of GitS devotees, but it adds to the character’s humanism and gives double meaning to the terms “Ghost” and “Shell”.

In a season full of bland Hollywood CGI candy, here’s a true sci-fi film that provides a lot of thought-provoking eye candy, tailor-made to be savoured on the big screen. – Delton V. Cox