Ghost In The Shell (12A)

THERE are ghosts haunting the release of this ambitious science fiction film. Firstly, the source material, the acclaimed manga comic books and anime films, whose fans no doubt will be pouring over this live-action adaptation, eager to find fault. And there’s been the controversy over the “whitewashing” casting of Scarlett Johansson as the lead character.

Dust away the obfuscation (and it’s no more than that) and what we have is a sci-fi that faithfully draws upon the imagery of those Japanese sources, but also fits into the tradition of Blade Runner, Total Recall and The Fifth Element – films that created near-future metropolises that are at once fantastical and familiar. There’s also an unavoidable dash of Robocop, in the main character of a law enforcement officer who is almost all machine.

In this future, people are routinely “enhanced” with cybernetic body parts. But when a young woman is saved from a car crash, she’s taken a step further, with just her brain housed in a machine – her mind the ghost inside the shell. In fact, it’s obvious that the car crash has just been made up, by the evil corporation that is trying to develop a new breed of soldier. Major, as she’s known, is the first.

A year later she is the prime asset in an anti-terrorist unit, able to leap off buildings, become invisible and generally out-jump and out-fight everyone around her. But she’s also suffering, perfectly cognisant of her condition as barely human. As a cyber-terrorist, Kuze (Michael Carmen Pitt), starts killing a specific group of scientists, Major’s concerns come into sharper focus.

With Snow White And The Huntsman, Brit director Rupert Sanders showed no lack of visual panache. Here he’s marshalled his designers and special effects teams towards an aesthetic that seems largely faithful to that of the original aesthetic of the manga and anime, albeit with a live-action muscularity. Some scenes, such as Major’s creation and a chase sequence through the city, are simply gorgeous.

Sanders also had the good sense to cast top-notch actors to add depth to the comic-book characters, including Danish actor Pilou Asbæk (the spin doctor from TV’s Borgen) as Major’s sidekick Batou, the great Japanese actor Takeshi Kitano as their boss and Juliette Binoche as the scientist who created her shell.

As for the star, she’s actually very well cast. In fact, there’s no actor today who so consistently portrays “otherness”. Johansson was superb as the malign alien in the Glasgow-set Under The Skin, the voice of a romantic operating system in Her, and a woman whose evolution is sped up in Lucy. For an actress who came to fame playing the sweetly ordinary (Lost In Translation) she really can turn on the mysterious, ethereal and just plain strange.

Here she conveys Major’s artificiality along with a neglected humanity desperately trying to reassert itself. And thanks to her Avengers outings, she happens to do kick-ass action rather well.

Despite its scale and ambition, the film isn’t revolutionary or heart-stopping. It takes a while to adjust to its dense visual style (it will repay repeat viewings) and two-dimensional plotting. But slowly it exerts a hold, not least because the theme – the loss of identity, of humanity as we become more and more technologically advanced – seems desperately relevant.

Kuze’s mode of cyber-hacking is a case in point – he hacks people’s brains. And it seems terribly believable, that sooner or later we’re going to be uploading, downloading directly in and out of our minds, losing ourselves in the mix.

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