Clearly, the design team are talented and this film is indeed a visual spectacle, but the director clearly doesn't understand why the anime was special. This barely touches on the core themes of the original, it is hollow, beautiful, but hollow.

After being rescued from near death, Major (Scarlett Johansson) becomes a cyber-enhanced soldier whom a secret government section use to prevent cyber-hacking (amongst other things). When Major discovers that Kuze (Michael Pitt) has set up his own rogue operation to destroy several people in her section she decides to hunt him down. However, when Major eventually tracks down Kuze he tells her a few home truths which make her begin to question who she really is and who she is really working for....It's fair to say that Ghost In The Shell probably borrows quite heavily from a lot of films, but both visually & in the way it presented its world it reminded me a lot of Blade Runner (the way the camera pans round the city and the striking visuals amidst the tower blocks and skyscrapers did feel reminiscent of Blade Runner). Plot wise the films are different (although perhaps with some overlapping). Anyway with that observation out of the way I'll crack on with some further thoughts...To start with the positives; the film looks great and some of the special effects are pretty impressive and the way that Scarlett nicely fills that 'shell' is also hard to ignore, but beyond the superficial I didn't find a great deal about this film that's worthy of much praise to be honest...Despite appearing to be interesting at the start the film soon becomes rather clichéd and obvious; the fact that it seems to contain strands of many science fiction films from yesteryear certainly doesn't do the film any favours. It perhaps wouldn't have been as bad if the film would have either been exciting, fast-paced or fun (which may have acted as a distraction to the obvious plotting) but the truth is that it is none of these things and unfortunately it does take itself far too seriously and the end result is something that is far less worthy than it thinks it is.OK to be fair a serious story told in a serious manner can work, but this can only work if key components exist within the story (such as depth, intrigue and characters that one can care about), but the honest truth is that you get none of this here. For example; there is absolutely no character development afforded to a single character (there is a slight arc with the protagonist, but not really enough to make me care). Hanka Robotics and their experiments aren't elaborated on in any great detail; I think we learn that 98 people have been selected for their programme, but why were these people selected? There is a modicum of intrigue at the start of the film, but this soon becomes dissipated and takes a fairly generic turn. Many of the characters are uninteresting and one-dimensional and the lack of depth afforded to them does make it hard to give a damn about them or anything that happens to them.I'm not really sure what else to say; it's a pretty film with a bit of action and a bit of soul-searching, but it doesn't amount to very much. It never quite falls into the realms of being boring (the director moves things along well enough for it never to get that bad), but at the same time I just had this feeling of indifference about the story and the characters all the way through the film which sadly meant that I didn't find it particularly enjoyable.

A classic action movie without any remarkable story.

Ghost In The ShellIt is perfect for all the comic fans as the throwbacks to all the sketchy characters, unusual powers and the origin story is depicted in here but in terms of an individual feature it barely gives you a lose thread to hold on to it. Rupert Sanders' execution skills are surprisingly good but unfortunately the script didn't have enough material to feed off the audience for more than 100 minutes. Scarlett Johansson seems like a good choice to cast upon on such a role and her effort is appreciative too but despite of revolving the tale completely around her, the script doesn't offer enough range to flaunt her skills on screen. Ghost In The Shell has a decent background score, amazing visual effects and stunning make-up artist behind it but addition to that it doesn't have anything fresh in terms of plotline or even action sequences which is usually essential in such features that relies a lot upon such stuff.