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Ghost in the Shell | 2017 | PG-13 | - 4.7.4

In the near future a woman (Scarlett Johansson) awakens in a laboratory to find herself in a cybernetic body she cannot feel, and also devoid of memories. Trained and put into service as an anti-terror specialist, she searches for the truth about her past. Also with Pilou Asbaek, "Beat" Takeshi Kitano, Michael Carmen Pitt, Juliette Binoche, Chin Han, Danusia Samal, Peter Ferdinando, Kaori Momoi, Anamaria Marinca, Daniel Henshall, Lasarus Ratuere and Yutaka Izumihara. Directed by Rupert Sanders. Several lines of dialogue are in Japanese with English subtitles. [1:46]

SEX/NUDITY 4 - In many scenes, both close-ups and long shots, a female human-android hybrid appears in a tight, opaque, flesh-colored body suit that is her cybernetic body; it shows buttocks and features transparent covers over the material at the breasts, emphasizing curves creating an illusion of nudity, but no nipples or genitals are exposed or outlined. A female human-android hybrid removes a wet suit and we see lifelike skin on her shoulders, back, and the side of one breast. A female human-android hybrid's legs and thighs are covered in thin tights and are exposed in the slits in a long coat.
 A club scene features large hologram boxes in which women in android body suits writhe and dance (we see body outlines and the curves of breasts and buttocks); one hologram box shows two shirtless men wrestling, exposing bare backs and thighs in long shorts. A man in a washroom at a urinal that is below the screen looks at the person beside him, who turns, and we see a male android wearing female attire, reaching below the frame and shaking something (we do not hear urination or see flesh).
 A 40-foot hologram woman wearing a blue bikini lifts a barbell as we see cleavage and midriff. A desk figurine of a nude android woman is seen from the back, with bare buttocks and thighs shown. A nude, genderless android lies in a glass case and the "skin" on thighs and legs is metallic silver; the rest of the body is covered in red artificial muscle.
 A prostitute on a street corner wears a miniskirt that bares her legs to the tops of the thighs; an android woman takes her home, where we see the prostitute wearing a tank top (we see the outlines of nipples briefly), and her thigh-high hose ends at the top of her thighs, where the skirt is pulled up.
 A human-android man removes a hooded coat to show a metallic patched-together upper body covered with plates of silver, copper, and gold, with what looks like human skin on one shoulder. Several men are shown shirtless as they sit on the floor of a warehouse. A man lifts his shirt to show a large Y incision on his stomach.

VIOLENCE/GORE 7 - A man rips the eye panel off an android and strangles her as she screams and the scene ends. In an interrogation room, a man with a scarred forehead is tethered to the ceiling by a cable and tied to the floor with a strap; he shouts and cries, then takes on another personality and says that he has been born many times, and then jumps, bends his knees, and hangs himself. A man visits a businessman, tells him that he is being charged with several murders and other crimes, and shoots the criminal in the chest (we see bloody bullet wounds); the criminal crumples and rises again and the other man shoots him in the abdomen twice (we see two bloody holes as the man falls backward into a lily pool, presumably dead).
 A human-android hybrid woman and a human-android man enter a small brick building and a bomb explodes into flames that fill the screen, throwing them through the air and toward the camera; a second man uses a remote control to activate a large jeep that looks like six legs on a spider a body that has two glowing red lights like eyes, above two machine gun barrels on the body and the jeep fires at the man on the ground, missing, and then extends a robotic arm and grabs him by the face, lifting him off the ground; the woman climbs on a stone bridge that crumbles when the jeep fires at it and she jumps and lands on the jeep, pounding and pulling the top hatch open until the artificial skin on her arms breaks open (we see synthetic muscle-like electronics); she destroys the jeep with a grenade and she lands on the ground, missing ¾ of one arm (red cables hang out), her leg is burned, as is the center of her body and other arm; the human-android hybrid man crawls next to her and we see both lower legs gone, cables exposed and his upper arms and face are charred and he dies.
 A blurry image shows a body on a gurney, medics wearing rubber suits beside it and a close-up of undulating light-emitting cables shows them reaching up through liquid to attach it to a human brain; the cables flesh out to become a cybernetic female body of red muscle-like electronics and the featureless body floats through light, breaks the surface of the liquid, and we see a face, hand, and arm becoming covered in white plastic.
 A woman dives backward off a skyscraper and becomes invisible and then appears in a geisha house and shoots an android in the face (it falls on its back, its face plates open to show electronic parts) while other geisha robots shoot and kill four men without blood flow (the robots have white geisha face paint over faces that are made of seamed metal plates); four masked men enter and shoot other men, a geisha robot runs a cable that is her tongue into the back of a man's head and kills him and then carries him away as she crab-walks backwards (like a spider) and a woman kicks and shoots and kills four men (we see no blood); a woman looks at her forearm and sees a black burn and an opening through which we see electrical cables. A hologram platform shows a blurry image of a dead man slumped over a table.
 A garbage truck runs into a car, flipping it onto its hood as we hear crunching metal and breaking glass that leaves glass bits over the pavement; the truck driver approaches the car with an automatic rifle and threatens a woman who fell out of the car, while his partner shoots and kills the driver, who is upside down in the seat; another man and woman arrive and shoot one of the first shooters while the other shooter runs away and stands in shallow water in a street where the woman, invisible except for a faint partial outline, punches and kicks him several times as we watch him being thrown here and there and then fall; she then picks him up and slams him into the water until a soldier stops her and drags the man away. A soldier shoots and kills three men in a hallway, without blood showing, and an android man fires two automatic pistols at the soldier, missing.
 A woman sees a hologram of a burning building, shoots at it and it crumbles while elsewhere we hear a beep and a huge explosion with flames that blind a soldier; the camera cuts to him at a clinic, where he has received artificial eyes -- like small binocular lenses -- and when he looks at a woman he sees her skeleton.
 Anti-terror fighters open a warehouse with a grenade (we see the light flash and hear only a muffled explosion) and the team finds men attached to face masks connected to cables; the team shoots several men, one of whom falls dead into his soup bowl and a short fistfight occurs in a dark hall and we hear more gunshots off-screen. A man pokes a woman in the buttocks with an electric prod five times, making her shout in pain; she swings around a pole, kicking three other men in the face, kicks two more men, and a soldier enters and shoots all five men dead, without blood showing. A fight with electric prods occurs in a completely dark room and we see and hear sparks and see a woman's grimacing face once.
 A man shoots through a glass wall at a woman, cracking and breaking the glass loudly and killing the woman, who slumps to the floor with two bloody holes in her chest. Four men shoot at a man in his car and he exits the car unharmed and shoots the men (we see no blood). A man shoots and kills three other men in a restaurant (we see no blood).
 A human-android hybrid woman lies on a table with a cable in the back of her head, allowing her mind to enter the electronics of an inactive android; the woman sees herself floating down to the bottom of a vat of liquid and enter the android, and blurry images of men and women crumble to ash and she sees a man cloaked completely in a hooded coat as hundreds of metal heads, shoulders and arms attack her like bugs; the camera cuts to the table, where the woman convulses and the scene ends. A white cover is pulled back from a human-android's face and she coughs and gags as she shouts, "I can't feel my body" and begins to convulse; men and women hold her down and the scene ends. We see blurry images of two people chained to hospital beds, looking like they are shouting; sounds are distant and muddled. A man gives a woman a large vial of liquid and tells her to kill a human-android hybrid woman with it; the first woman injects liquid into the port on the back of a human-android hybrid woman, who says, "You're killing me." A human-android woman stands on a high rooftop where she falls backward, waves a hand and becomes invisible.
 A human-android hybrid woman is suspended a foot above a floor by a gripping device around her head and temples while a man speaking in a stilted robot voice explains that scientists tried to combine a human brain with an android body many times before they built her and that he is one of the failures, limping, and finding it hard to speak; he says the scientists dissected his body while he was alive and threw everything away except the brain and that he says he will kill them in self-defense; he hugs her, releases her and she shoots him with a handgun to no effect, except a hole in the throat area (we see some exposed cables).
 A human-android hybrid woman lies on a gurney as a machine (resembles a sewing machine) works over her electronic forearm, covering it with artificial skin. A machine works over a damaged human-android hybrid repairing her body and arms, covering red electronic parts that look like muscles with white skin from upper chest to lower stomach. A human-android hybrid plugs a long cable into the back of her head to recharge. We see several people with cybernetic parts: A few men and a woman have cables of LED lights flowing into their heads as enhanced hearing; a few men have one cyborg-type arm. A shirtless man displays scars on his shoulders from fights. Several monks meditate with cables from a ceiling stuck into the backs of their heads. Three transparent bags hanging from a ceiling contain dirt and dead men. 20-foot tall guards are shown with large automatic rifles.
 A human-android hybrid woman startles a human woman at home and questions her about human experiments; we hear that the woman fed false memories to the first woman's brain and that her parents really did not die. A woman's mother says that the government told her that her daughter took her own life. A woman says about a killer, "I will kill him." We hear that doctors and business people have developed a way to join the human brain with a cybernetic body, after failing 98 times that ended in the death of humans. A doctor says that the brain contains a soul and is still a person. A woman says to a human-android hybrid, "You are what everyone will become one day." Two men argue loudly, shouting.
 A human-android woman speeds to a dark alley on a motorcycle after dragging the owner by the wrist and dropping him by the side of the road in a long shot. A human-android woman has a vision of people being dragged from a building and beaten with clubs by soldiers. A woman visits her own tombstone in a high-rise cemetery. A woman swims underwater among several jellyfish, which are transparent.

LANGUAGE 4 - 1 obscene hand gesture, 3 scatological terms, 1 mild obscenity, name-calling (company man, violent, unstable), 2 religious exclamations (Oh God, she's a miracle).

SUBSTANCE USE - A human-android hybrid injects yellow memory blocker into two ports on the back of her head on several occasions. Saki bottles are shown in front of men in a restaurant, a man drinks from a can of beer in a few scenes, and a man in a bar picks up a bottle of unknown substance and breaks it on the floor below the frame. A man smokes a hookah and another man holds an unlit cigar, a woman lights and smokes two cigarettes in a laboratory, and an ash tray is filled with cigarette butts.

DISCUSSION TOPICS - Human-robotics hybrids, human experimentation, human rights, murder, greed, power, memories, loss, grief, courage, sacrifice, having a mission, trust, justice, finding missing family.

MESSAGE - Projects in the near future to combine human brains with cybernetic bodies may lead to disaster.

CAVEATS

Be aware that while we do our best to avoid spoilers it is impossible to disguise all details and some may reveal crucial plot elements.

We've gone through several editorial changes since we started covering films in 1992 and older reviews are not as complete & accurate as recent ones; we plan to revisit and correct older reviews as resources and time permits.

Our ratings and reviews are based on the theatrically-released versions of films; on video there are often Unrated, Special, Director's Cut or Extended versions, (usually accurately labelled but sometimes mislabeled) released that contain additional content, which we did not review.


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