Like its synthetic heroine (Scarlett Johansson), the live-action “Ghost in the Shell” is a feast for the eyes. With its killer-robot geishas, Godzilla-size hologram ads and nearly nude fighting gear, it’s a cyberpunk wonderland — but there isn’t much ghost left in this smokin’ hot shell.
Johansson plays Major Mira Killian, the first of her kind: A military-designed robot with a human brain, she’s made for killing bad guys — and she does it in a high-tech, skin-colored wetsuit that lets her flicker into invisibility at will.
Look, I’m not going to argue with a seemingly naked, ass-kicking ScarJo — she’s like Viggo Mortensen in that “Eastern Promises” bathhouse fight, but even cooler. Still, I couldn’t help wondering: Why the nude color? Is it to distract the target? (If so, fair enough.) If it’s mostly to make her invisible, why isn’t she wearing a hood, too? (Possibly so as not to mess up her excellent, manga-evocative haircut.)
Major’s on the trail of a slippery villain named Kuze (Michael Pitt), who’s offing executives at her robotics company by hacking into the consciousness of various accomplices to make them commit murders. His warnings about the company begin to dovetail with glitches in Major’s brain that suggest her past isn’t what she’s been told. When she confronts the older-model cyborg Kuze — Pitt intoning like a Speak & Spell on low batteries — she starts to question everything, including the line she’s been fed by her doctor (Juliette Binoche) about how memory is irrelevant.
Turn off your brain, and it’s easy enough to savor the noir beauty here.
Turn off your brain, and it’s easy enough to savor the noir beauty here. Director Rupert Sanders (“Snow White and the Huntsman”) throws in countless hat-tips to the 1995 anime film. And many of his shots, such as a surgeon smoking a cigarette in her pristine lab, and a detective (Pilou Asbæk) with eye implants that resemble binoculars, look like they’re ripped straight from the original comic-book source.
But part of the essential problem for “Ghost in the Shell” is its timing: By now, we’re well-versed in (if not weary of) the tale of the self-aware robot questioning the nature of humanity, and a lot of the plot points here feel like microwaved leftovers of everything from “Blade Runner” to “The Matrix” to “Westworld.”
There’s also been a teensy bit of controversy over the casting of Johansson, whose character in the original is named Major Motoko Kusanagi. And OK, you can argue (as the film’s key players have) that race is irrelevant in a futuristic part-cyborg society, but Sanders sets the action in an Asian city, populates it with a largely Asian supporting cast, and makes his central characters exclusively white. (Yes, Japanese actor “Beat” Takeshi Kitano plays Major’s boss, but he’s on-screen for all of 10 minutes.) To add insult to injury, Major’s pre-cyborg name turns out to be Motoko. It’s a pretty cynical, if predictable, Hollywood move: Take the spirit of the Japanese creation, transplant it into a white body and hope the operation’s a success.