A remake of a movie from 1995 can be seen in cinemas from this Thursday on and so here is my review of
GHOST IN THE SHELL
TRAILER
Director:
Rupert SandersWriters:
Masamune Shirow (based on the comic 'The Ghost in the Shell' by), Jamie Moss (screenplay) | 1 more credit »Stars:
STORYLINE
In the near future, Major (Scarlett Johansson) is the first of her kind:
A human saved from a terrible crash, who is cyber-enhanced to be a
perfect soldier devoted to stopping the world's most dangerous
criminals. When terrorism reaches a new level that includes the ability
to hack into people's minds and control them, Major is uniquely
qualified to stop it. As she prepares to face a new enemy, Major
discovers that she has been lied to: her life was not saved, it was
stolen. She will stop at nothing to recover her past, find out who did
this to her and stop them before they do it to others. Based on the
internationally acclaimed Japanese Manga, "The Ghost in the Shell."
REVIEW:
The Ghost in the Shell's running time is about 110, it is an Action, Drama, and Fantasy movie, and it is PG-13 rated. The movie tells us the story about Major, who is played by Scarlett Johanson as a Cyborg, a person, who is created for reason, what kind of reason I cannot tell you, because I would tell you the clue of the movie, but all what I can say so far is, that the clue is not a surprise, the story is flat, the acting is bad and boring, and the scoring of the movie at all gives me hard time understand why the movie was so much hipped, which I will explain during the review.
But let us start with the CAST first. So we have Scarlett Johansson as the main character, as the person, who should bring out the story, and push the action in the movie. A main character should be the most important person, but she is not. She is a complete fallout. She is saying 20 sentences at all, her way of acting, her look, her skills, which might be needful to understand why she was created are unreal, her costumes, and finally her behaviour overall in the movie is played in a kind, that I have to say: I am sorry, but she is misplaced here. At all I have to say I had the feeling I am watching an Asian movie, because the whole cast are nearly played by Asian, and hot by Hollywood people, which the movie wants to tell us, also the studio behind the directing, which is
Arad Productions,
DreamWorks, and Grosvenor Park Productions.
Other people of the cast are not important for the movie. We have too many different people who are involved in the cloning and cyborg stuff, that it is too much complicated to talk about them. All of them are most of time sitting around a table and negotiating, in the next scene the same, and then the same again. The movie takes his time to speed time and so we are talking about the SETTING. The recordings and locations have been in Wellington again, same as Kong Skull Island for example. The problem here, that the movie wants to create a scenery, which looks like Japan or somewhere in China. I wonder why they chose New Zealand as the locations, if it could have been more convincing, if the setting was in Asia.
The CAMERA is okay, nothing special. Movements and way of following people is nothing new here. Slow motions, POV, and speeding up in action scenes is also nothing new here, so the movie does not invent something new according to the camera.
The MUSIC is a big problem in the movie. It is most of the time too loud, too many songs, and most of the time it does not fit to the action and scenes. By the way there have been concerts all the around, in 600 countries to promote the music of the movie, and all of the songs better fit into a rock concert, then into this movie. There are 30 different songs in the movie, which is way too much for a score, which is fair to reflect to composer work.
The EFFECTS are cool, but they are coming to a time, when the movie cannot be saved anymore. They are too late, but if, then they are cool, and give the movie a kind of twist and new direction of where it wants to go.
WHAT I LIKE ABOUT THE MOVIE:
It is not a lot to say what I like about the movie, actually it is nothing else than the effects and the fact, that it has nice places and colors.
WHAT I DO NOT LIKE ABOUT THE MOVIE:
It starts with the cast. Scarlett Johansson is not good, her performance is bad, and she is not person in the movie, where I was able to find any emotional contact, and this is a killer for a movie, when there is no emotional base to the main character. The story is flat, and twists and the ending are really not a big suprise, you always know, what will happen next. The music is too much, and too much over the tops. The story and the sequences of telling us the whole picture of the movie do not fit in there. Ruppert Sanders, the director said before he confirmed, that he will be the Director: "I want to create something new, something which makes us think about human, who were created as robots, and I want to push the level of the 1995's movie into a new dimension." Sorry Rupert, but you failed in my eyes.
For it's genre I will give The Ghost of the Shell 3 out of 10 points, because there still some action and drama sequences in there, which I liked, even though I lost my interests in watchin after 40 minutes.
Overall it earns 1.5 out of 10 points and so I cannot agree with the score of 6.9 out of 10 points at IMDB, the movie belongs to those categories like never ever again, and I could have done someting else in those 106 minutest.
So I am done with the review of The Ghost in the Shell, in cinemas from March 30, 2017 on and thanks for reading and I wish you a lot of fun in the movie houses while watching.
