If you're looking for great sci-fi action, ideas, images and effects, you'll definitely enjoy this one.
But be prepared for a convoluted plot - if you're like me you'll be rewinding and watching the film again to make sure you didn't miss anything...and it's well-worth your time to do so; the rich, soulful atmosphere of this cyberpunk world deserves to be explored for more than the film's relatively short duration (under 100 minutes, I believe).
Not unlike most Manga, it's the world that these people inhabit more than the story that really stimulates the senses. This can also be said about the other category that Ghost in the Shell fits, that of cyberpunk, which Ridley Scott's classic Blade Runner first rendered so vividly almost 20 years earlier.
Like the replicants and humans in Blade Runner who ponder the meaning of life in a world where technology can do anything we can do better, our hero this time, Major Kusunagi, finds herself debating the significance of real and 'artificial' existence, in a gorgeously-drawn Hong-Kong-like city in the future.
You see, she herself is neither a human nor a replicant. As an employee of a high-profile law-enforcement agency, she's been fitted with an entirely mechanical body, or "SHELL"; all that remains of her human self is her soul within it - her "GHOST".
(SOME DISCUSSION OF THE PLOT IS COMING UP! BE WARNED, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, THIS MIGHT SPOIL A LITTLE BIT OF IT!)
The mysterious appearance of the PuppetMaster (who we are led to believe is a hacker who can control people's minds by hacking into their "Ghosts") troubles the Major. It triggers reminders of the conflict between technology and humanity that goes on inside of her - and she's becoming painfully aware that the technology is winning.
So she goes swimming in the harbor at the mercy of her flotation devices, realizing that her metal body would sink and kill her if they failed (the look in her eye hints that she secretly wishes they would). Heck, technology has even taken the fun out of drinking, she laments, her cyber-body can sober her up in seconds at the mere thought of it. It's details like these that give Ghost in the Shell an eerie sense of realism and seriousness, one that plays off neatly with the high-tech action sequences that pepper the plot as it rolls along.
There's a particularly dazzling scene - one of the most BEAUTIFUL scenes in any movie I've EVER seen - a montage of people going about their lives in this urban landscape. It really drives the point home: the imagined future of the film is one that has lost its soul. And further into the montage the images look less like an unfamiliar nightmare-future and more like a very REAL present-day. It's a haunting warning to the viewer that the Major's world may not be too far off our own horizon.
The Major meets her exact counterpart in the 'Puppetmaster': it is not a hacker, but in fact a "Ghost" unlike any other. "It" (neither a he nor a she) was "born in the sea of information". For the first time, technology has actually created a soul - something that is alive. It's fitting that an engraving of the Evolutionary Tree of Life on the wall is destroyed just as the PuppetMaster, an artificial soul born without a body, and the Major, a soul who gave up her body for an artificial one, finally meet.
This is not just another "Blood, Tits 'n' Guts" cartoon for adolescent ravers. It feels more like, "Stanley-Kubrick-meets-The-Matrix".
Try watching Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell side-by-side, you'll probably find that it holds up well - which says a lot, considering that Blade Runner ranks in the 'Top-100' on this site (it ranks #67).
But be prepared for a convoluted plot - if you're like me you'll be rewinding and watching the film again to make sure you didn't miss anything...and it's well-worth your time to do so; the rich, soulful atmosphere of this cyberpunk world deserves to be explored for more than the film's relatively short duration (under 100 minutes, I believe).
Not unlike most Manga, it's the world that these people inhabit more than the story that really stimulates the senses. This can also be said about the other category that Ghost in the Shell fits, that of cyberpunk, which Ridley Scott's classic Blade Runner first rendered so vividly almost 20 years earlier.
Like the replicants and humans in Blade Runner who ponder the meaning of life in a world where technology can do anything we can do better, our hero this time, Major Kusunagi, finds herself debating the significance of real and 'artificial' existence, in a gorgeously-drawn Hong-Kong-like city in the future.
You see, she herself is neither a human nor a replicant. As an employee of a high-profile law-enforcement agency, she's been fitted with an entirely mechanical body, or "SHELL"; all that remains of her human self is her soul within it - her "GHOST".
(SOME DISCUSSION OF THE PLOT IS COMING UP! BE WARNED, IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE, THIS MIGHT SPOIL A LITTLE BIT OF IT!)
The mysterious appearance of the PuppetMaster (who we are led to believe is a hacker who can control people's minds by hacking into their "Ghosts") troubles the Major. It triggers reminders of the conflict between technology and humanity that goes on inside of her - and she's becoming painfully aware that the technology is winning.
So she goes swimming in the harbor at the mercy of her flotation devices, realizing that her metal body would sink and kill her if they failed (the look in her eye hints that she secretly wishes they would). Heck, technology has even taken the fun out of drinking, she laments, her cyber-body can sober her up in seconds at the mere thought of it. It's details like these that give Ghost in the Shell an eerie sense of realism and seriousness, one that plays off neatly with the high-tech action sequences that pepper the plot as it rolls along.
There's a particularly dazzling scene - one of the most BEAUTIFUL scenes in any movie I've EVER seen - a montage of people going about their lives in this urban landscape. It really drives the point home: the imagined future of the film is one that has lost its soul. And further into the montage the images look less like an unfamiliar nightmare-future and more like a very REAL present-day. It's a haunting warning to the viewer that the Major's world may not be too far off our own horizon.
The Major meets her exact counterpart in the 'Puppetmaster': it is not a hacker, but in fact a "Ghost" unlike any other. "It" (neither a he nor a she) was "born in the sea of information". For the first time, technology has actually created a soul - something that is alive. It's fitting that an engraving of the Evolutionary Tree of Life on the wall is destroyed just as the PuppetMaster, an artificial soul born without a body, and the Major, a soul who gave up her body for an artificial one, finally meet.
This is not just another "Blood, Tits 'n' Guts" cartoon for adolescent ravers. It feels more like, "Stanley-Kubrick-meets-The-Matrix".
Try watching Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell side-by-side, you'll probably find that it holds up well - which says a lot, considering that Blade Runner ranks in the 'Top-100' on this site (it ranks #67).