Ghost In the Shell (Dir. Rupert Sanders, 1h 46.)

You all knew this was coming. Ghost in the Shell is as bad as everyone feared. That's my verdict and as this film sinks like an overly polished rock into the mire, it's a verdict most of the world seems to share If you've come for Scarlet Johannson-apologist, a "well as least people know about it now" mentality, a sense that this film is anything other than a mixture of "ain't that cool!" pilfered shots and concepts from the original 1995 animated Ghost in the Shell and its panoply of associated series, with Blade Runner city-scapes sprinkled on top bolted haphazardly to one of the Bourne movies this review is not for you. Is it all bad? No, but you have to work hard to find anything good in the shell of this film,few and far between as they are, and above it all, hangs the question-why? Why remake a visionary film like Ghost in the Shell, so influential that its very visual fabric has by now seeped into cinema's visual conscious from those adherents to its altar via films like The Matrix and Ex Machina?

Before we rip the skull open and take a look at what little of the original intelligence of the original remains, the thorny issue of Ms Johannson must be tackled-and to be honest, the film's revelation that Major (that's her name, ladies and gents)'s brain has and always will be Japanese, stolen by the shadowy Hanka Robotics from a young Japanese activist, only makes it worse. Whilst I'm sure, dear reader, that you are well aware of the critique of white-washing against this films, for those who aren't previously aware; the Major, in the original comic, has a Japanese name, has Japanese features, and despite suggestions from Kodansha (who have likely raked in several dozen million from selling the Ghost in the Shell concept) that she was never intended to be Japanese, she exists in a series where with few exceptions, every major character is Japanese. Thus, to cast a Caucasian actress would be, to be blunt, racially insensitive-you only need to look at the outrage that accompanies, for example, the Human Torch being played by a black actor to indicate that there is a double standards to this, but that's for another article.
So why can't the Major be played by a Japanese or Chinese actress? Why not, for example, the formidable Rinko Kikuchi-an actress who is the perfect age for the Major, has a similar facial look to the Major, and speaks English? Money, dear boy. Much as I noted with my review of The Great Wall, we're told that we need a major white actress or actor so that a western audience will go and see it, or the film will flounder. This point of view, in short, assumes that, no matter how good a film is, unless there's a familiar white face to assuage the fears of the cinema-going public, they won't go and see it-in short, cinema-goers are at least passively racist.
So how does Johannson fare? Eh. Eh sums it up well. She's never terrible and we get a sense that she's trying her best to be somehow other, human but not quite human, and in the action scenes, she certainly has a sense of toughness and solidity. Elsewhere, however, she seems to struggle-in the quieter scenes she seems less stoic silent soldier and more like a sullen computer technician in search of a coffee-at best, she seems to fill the Major's boots, but a more natural fit, unfortunately, would have been someone in the vein of Kikuchi.

With that rather concerning point made, let's move on to the film itself, and to our supporting cast. And, here comes one of the saving graces of this film. Takeshi "Beat" Kitano as Section 9 chief Aramaki. God bless you, Beat. Even though every single line you say is in Japanese and subtitled, and you're barely in this for twenty minutes, every second you're here is a good second-to be fair, Kitano pretty much plays, well, Kitano, the cool, calculating badass who wanders through the two action scenes he's involved with with a simplicity and naturalness that few other characters. The other two redeeming things are Batou (Pilou Asbæk) who retains a lot of his heart and humour, acting both as foil and companion to the Major, and a more grounded and humour, and Michael Pitt as villainous but charasmatic (and dare I say it, actually fun) Kuze. Whilst a minor character in Stand Alone Complex, he seems to have been bulked out with both elements from the Laughing Man and the Puppet Master, and left to pretty much chew every element of scenery he can get his teeth on. That said, even he has his issues, with his bizarrely Max Headroomish voice that seems to glitch for not apparent reason.

And, to be blunt, this, and a few nice visual shots are where the good things about this film ends. Lets start at the beginning. With her body supposedly dying post a terrorist attack, Major's brain is placed into a robotic body, and we get, in essence, a shot-by-shot remake of the opening scene of the original 1995 film, even down to camera positioning. From here, we're then dropped straight into a recreation of the original opening scene of the original 1995 film, with the raid on the attempted hacking on a member of Hanka another shot-by-shot recreation from the original 1995 film, with ADDED ROBO GEISHA (truth be told, the robo-geisha design is decent, and to find these are real working prop masks is truly spectacular). It soon becomes apparent, after a few equally gruesome murders that someone wants a decent number of Hanka dead. So, Major, and it's made bluntly clear that that IS her real first name, decides to follow the perpetrator inside the geisha's mind, and in a reasonably well realised sequence that throws us into the nightmareish hacked mind, we finally come close to seeing the hooded figure, before Major realises that it is a trap, and is promptly pulled out by Batou, her colleague. 

From here, the film quickly goes through the setpieces from the original movie-the rubbish truck crash, the chase on foot (which, literally, shot for shots, adds the bloody plane that flies over) and subsequent realisation that the truck-driver's memory has been entirely altered, the scene with Major swimming, and so on. It's at this point that the film finally decides it's remade enough scenes from the original film, and merrily drops the "so, Major isn't the first, Kuze is actually a failed cyborg too, also he made an Internet of braaaaains" bomb. Someone left the cinema at this point. I do not blame them. Worse was to come. So, since the Major was, apparently, now on Kuze's side, and must be destroyed. No "But haven't we pretty much established she's a human, therefore has human rights, and can't just be product recalled" suggestion. Nope. Off to be destroyed she goes, except her "shell" creator, played by Juilette Binoche has a change of heart, frees her, and sends her off to find her actual mother, who just knows that the mysterious Caucasian stranger who wanders into her house is something to do with her daughter. Oh, but wait!

We have a denoument to get to! So, with the head of Hanka having decided that this film needs a villain, and commencing open season on Section 9, (to little effect), Major (or is it Makoto now?) having worked out who she is and with Kuze left with nothing to do, we go for...a single tachikoma, that doesn't even look like a tachikoma attacking Kuze and Makoto at the shrine that used to be the home for runaway kids, who seem to be Hanka's single source of plentiful test-subject braaains. Oh, and Kuze and Makoto used to be in love. Aramaki dispatches the head of Hanka, Kuze gets shot and buggers off to the Wired/the Matrix/the Internet, and one happy family reunion later, Makoto (or is it Major) finally does the "going invisible shot" from ten minutes into the 1995 Ghost in the Shell.

What can I say that has not been said about Ghost in the Shell? It's not the worst adaption ever. Makoto looks decent, the city and supporting characters look the part, and occasionally there's a cool new visual to look at-if nothing else, the film has recreated some of the original set-pieces well. But everywhere else, it is an abject failure. Johannson lacks the gravitas to be Major Kusanagi, regardless of her race. The story is a mess, stripping GitS of its deeply philosophical side aside from a half baked "you're made human by your experiences" Aesop that totally misses the point of the original series. The film's plot flows like treacle and everything that isn't a straight lift from the original either feels overly padded (at 106 minutes it's barely twenty minutes over the original's length yet feels slow and often sluggish), or unnecessary.
At the centre of this, lies a rather insidious question. What is the point of this film? Certainly not to prove that a Japanese work can be adapted for a western audience. Say what you like about The Ring, The Grudge, etc; at least these were transferred wholesale into a western setting-having one member of your otherwise anglophile cast speak entirely in subtitled Japanese does not make a film overly accessible as many "Westmakes" have done. An American GitS that transferred the action to, for example, a US city with a decent Japanese population or trade (say, for example, Seattle), and had an entirely western cast would have been better than this film. A Major with an American brain, in America, written as an American, would have been better than this faintly worrying fudge that this film comes up with.
Neither is it to raise the profile of Ghost in the Shell. I can, should I wish, in the morning, go down and buy the original 1995 film, for half the ticket price of this film (£5), from a supermarket. Not a specialist shop, or a HMV, or a retailer that specialises in foreign language cinema. A common or garden supermarket. Ghost in the Shell is perhaps one of the best known, and certainly most influential films of animation, period. This live action version would have been fine in the 1990s, just as this series was becoming known, but now its DNA has become, via the previously mentioned works, part of the cinematic lexicon. As a result, GITS 2017 is not groundbreaking, but a film that uses imagery that we've seen dozens of times before. In fact, this film seems to have an identity crisis that boils down to "it's too weird for the mainstream and too mainstream for the weird", and it's this, the strange mix of the utterly slavish copyist who somehow misjudges the work's entire tone, that makes it clear that GITS 2017 is a film that may dress the right people the right way, and have the right scenery, but it completely misses the heart and soul of this film. It has a shell, but no ghost. The soul has left.

Save yourself £10. Buy yourself the original film, a nice bag of supermarket popcorn, a few beers if you want, and get a few like minded friends round, and watch the original, a work, that, some 22 years on, is still a stunning, intelligent, action packed, and most importantly, human film.

Rating: Avoid. [Worst film of 2017 so far]