Ghost in the Shell review: can Scarlett Johansson bring the philosophical cyborg movie to life?

Based on a well-loved Japanese manga by Masamune Shirow that's been adapted into numerous anime movies, TV shows and video games, the live action Ghost in the Shell comes with baggage. Much of the buzz around the film has been about whitewashing – the casting of white actors in (in this case) Japanese roles.

The handling in the film is unlikely to change the minds of detractors. But outside of its heritage, in a way Ghost in the Shell (GITS, if you will) is so generic that it's short on any true sense of identity at all.

Utterly, unquestionably gorgeous to look at, but at heart a fairly bog-standard futuristic action movie, GITS is all Shell with barely a Ghost of anything inside.

Scarlett Johansson plays Major, a counter-terrorist cyborg with a human brain – her original body, she's told, was ravaged in a shipwreck, her mind rescued by the scientists of Hanka Robotics and placed into the form of a super soldier.

This is a world where cyber-enhancements for humans are common (we meet one guy who has a cyber-liver so he can get wasted and not die), and while cyber soldiers are efficient and expendable they lack the nuance, reasoning and intuition of a human. Which means Major is Hanka's greatest weapon.

With heavy emphasis on stunning scraps and shoot outs, GITS's arc is a disjointed one. Heavy on exposition (the explanation of the title in the first act actually made us laugh in embarrassment), but light on actual story, we move from one set piece to the next with multiple multicultural but rather thinly drawn secondary characters strewn along the way.

The meat of the story – Major's true origin, her final confrontation with a mysterious assassin (Michael Pitt), a sub plot with shadows of The Bride of Frankenstein that never quite comes into the light – doesn't kick in until fairly late on, and is dispensed with far too fast in favour of more flashy fights. The result is a spectacular but mostly cold and emotionless watch.

This is only the second feature for director Rupert Sanders, whose debut was Snow White and The Huntsman, a similarly good-looking but hollow update of a classic text. Ghost in the Shell is certainly better than that, and Sanders does show incredible flair and aptitude with VFX and action.

In fact GITS is gorgeous enough to justify the ticket price on effects alone. Set in a Blade Runner-esque metropolis that's never pinned down specifically location-wise but borrows aesthetics from Japan, the city is a melee of the real and the virtual. Fifty-foot-high CG koi carp weave through skyscrapers, advertising is part of the architecture where towering women and children entreat you from above; on the outskirts tenement buildings loom larger with dizzying uniformity.

To watch in 3D (and especially IMAX, if you can) is to be entirely immersed in an incredible alien landscape. So much so that the plot, such that it is, rattles like an annoying tour guide in the background when you're trying to enjoy the view.

Flirting with the big themes of identity, loyalty and what it means to be human, GITS rather sidelines its philosophical side for a generic conspiracy theory thread. Johansson is gorgeous and badass and the supporting cast are solid but forgettable, (with a special mention for Juliette Binoche as Major's creator and surrogate mother).

But as a pseudo-existential, glossy sci-fi actioner it just plays as Matrix-light.

Director: Rupert Sanders; Screenplay: Jamie Moss, William Wheeler; Starring: Scarlett Johansson,Pilou Asbæk, Takashi Kitano, Juliette Binoche, Michael Pitt; Running Time: 107 mins; Certificate: 12A

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