“Ghost in the Shell” will make you want to leave the theater, so reconsider even going in the first place.
Scarlett Johansson is Major, a cyborg secret agent working for Section 9, an extra-judicial police force dedicated to next-level threats in a cyberpunk future city. Her boss is Aramaki (Takeshi Kitano), her best friend is Batou (Pilou Asbaek) and her surrogate mother and creator is Dr. Ouélet (Juliette Binoche).
Major is brought to life through cranial implantation; her mind, that of a young woman whose family died in an accident, is given second life. As the script reminds us incessantly, Major's former self is a "ghost" in her new "shell." I named these characters for you, but don't get the wrong impression: You won't remember any except Major, and this is but a third of the total number of bland characters populating the story.
You can see why Johansson took the part: Major (apparently divergent from the manga / anime source material ) is something of a sad robot, constantly feeling sullen about what her purpose is. Is she more human than human, less human than human? Is she a soldier? There's a lot to play here, but unfortunately Johansson is forced to stay in one gear — even during the scant action sequences that push the plot along. It's such a dreadfully dull script. She's capable of more.
Cyberpunk owes an unpayable debt to “Blade Runner,” and “Ghost” puts more money on the tab. But rather than the harsh, wet, moldy electronic landscape of the one-and-only "sullen robot" classic, “Ghost” feels computer-generated and dull. A few bits of trick cinematography register as beautiful, but the movie as a whole settles into a grey mess.
One major selling point of the movie to wider audiences is, of course, Johansson in a skin-tight white Predator-camo bodysuit; I think the trailers and advertising make that pretty clear. But her body is fuzzily computer-generated, and the shtick that she has to drop her trenchcoat and go into battle "nude" is a little on-the-nose. I write that as someone who still reads superhero comic books.
The whole movie is full of dumb contrivances like that, though. The plot moves along at the pace of the writers making decisions while writing the first draft; villains are ill-defined and then suddenly protagonists, while some characters disappear for an hour before finding sudden relevance to the plot.
It's hard to write about “Ghost” without mentioning the controversy surrounding it that Major is played by a Caucasian actress, instead of an Asian actress. While there are certainly problems with representation in cinema, I err on the side of the creators of the film and of the franchise and their decision to cast Johansson. She's recognizable, talented, a real selling point, and could have played a better role with immense skill. That being said, choices made in the telling of this story show a real and extraordinarily blind eye to the controversies raised by cross-racial casting. Maybe they were too far along to change things, but if you're at all turned off by the idea of characters changing race in a cliché way, stay away.
To be clear: If you're a fan of cyberpunk, Johansson, action, the original anime or, well, spending two hours at a fun, light, action-packed movie, you should also stay away. There isn't much here for anyone. In a year of great genre movies, this is the first unexpected stinker.