Perfectly titled, this shell of a movie is indeed inhabited by a ghost. It's a beautiful shell, to be sure, ornate and visually inventive. Whereas the titular "ghost" suggests a living human spirit with memories and feeling, one that lives inside the human brain of a robotic body, the ghost of the film is unfortunately quite dead.
Another vision of the future in which humans and technology combine in unholy fusion, Ghost in the Shell feels as though the sum of its parts is of less value than its individual components. Following Major Mira Killian, a cyborg with a robotic body and human brain, we descend deep into this new culture of people augmented with machines a populace of artifice and distraction. She has been created to be a counter-terrorist agent, and it doesn't take long for her to recognize her dissatisfaction; "glitches" show her memories of a past life, presumably of when she was human, and she begins to suspect that her superiors harbor dark designs.
It's a tired tale, a rote crime thriller with lots of action. The figure we suspect to be the primary antagonist becomes the catalyst for Killian's awakening, a shady assassination spree is revealed as corporate backstabbing, and a dazzling vision of the future ultimately dissolves into blind violence and laughable predictability. Heavily cliched plot points and flat characterizations render the film watchable but mind-numbing. I found myself hopelessly distracted, wanting to care about the people on screen but far more engaged with the holograms and digital screens in the background. Impressive visual invention can only do so much, and after the first half hour or so, this Ghost dissipates into thin air.
I couldn't help thinking, while viewing, that other films have done it all before, and better. As much as Ghost wants to be dark, poetic, and edgy, it ends up feeling cheap and familiar. It might have worked as a noir piece; Blade Runner certainly did, and it handled its own philosophy with grander style and considerable grace. Ghost doesn't even try to mine its considerable thematic weight, beyond a gimmicky few scenes of Killian looking for and finding her birth mother. Even those moments ring hollow, as Scarlett Johansson -- despite her talents carrying the film against all odds -- is more than a little too white to relate to her "mother", Kaori Momoi. I don't want to dive into the whitewashing controversy, especially considering that Killian's body was literally constructed, except to say that the central emotional journey of our protagonist just doesn't work due to the casting.
As I say, Blade Runner or even The Matrix both handle similar material better. Unlike this film, those each balance the melancholia and spectacle, capitalizing on their characters and themes with style and intelligence. Ghost wants to be eerie but settles for iffy. Its glossy exterior belies an empty void. The mystery it promises is no more mysterious than its first half-hour. What is unmistakably intended to be a cult favorite is lost in big-budget excess, and the sweet, tied-up ending seems determined to churn out a sequel. The only thing that kept me engaged past the halfway mark was Juliette Binoche as Dr Ouelet, who exhibits the film's only character development in one particularly lovely scene. Other than that, I was left wondering what the shell these filmmakers were doing.
IMDb: Ghost in the Shell
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