I love Scarlet Johansson. She’s a good actress. I’ve loved her since The Horse Whisperer (1998) and Ghost World (2001). She came into her own with Lost In Translation (2004).

Since her turn as Black Widow in The Avenger films she’s now taken over the reins of top female action star from Angelina Jolie. Lucy (2014) was a huge international hit so you can see why the producers wanted her to be in this remake of the 1995 Japanese anime cult classic. Unfortunately, the film is not very good. It’s quite a mess.

In the near future, technology has advanced so that humans can be augmented with cybernetics. Mira Killian (Johansson) is a survivor of an attack that killed her parents and due to her being too badly damaged to save is used as an experiment. A secret experiment developed a mechanical shell within which you can integrate a human brain. Over the objections of the designer, Dr. Ouelet (Juliette Binoche!) the Hanka company makes her a counter terrorist agent.

I don’t remember too much of the rest because I just wasn’t interested. The most interesting part was that Mira was having memories of her past life and tracks down her human mother and finds out about her human identity. This part of the story reminded me of a better film called RoboCop (1987) Dir. Paul Verhoeven.

Michael Pitt shows up as Hideo Kuze, a rebellion leader. He once had a promising career which reached a peak with Boardwalk Empire on HBO. Unfortunately, this film will not be his comeback bid.

Directed by Rupert Sanders (Snow White and The Huntsman (2012) with a lot of style but little substance. I’d be very surprised if there is a Ghost In The Shell 2.