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Let me start off by saying im a huge fan of Masamune Shirow, i have been for many years and i continue to be. Now thats out of the way, i'll start the review. Huh hem...

Terrible film. Beyond moronic in its execution, the digital acting is absolutly atrocious, it all comes off terribly cheesy like a midday japanese tv drama. Briarios ducking behind people in a suit at a party to surprise Duenan was beyond hilarious for all the wrong reasons, characters raising arms and biceps in the air shouting out their determination. Made me laugh out loud.

The film which has the legend ... John Woo producing it, so you would expect alot of crazy action going into it. If i remember correctly theres only about 3
action setpieces in the movie. Story wise, you can predict everything from a long way off. I was scratching my head trying to work out how stupid the characters are in this film. Some of the crucial plot elements, like devices etc you can see about 30mins earlier than anyone in the entire movie, it just makes the characters look stupid and the whole thing unbelievable.

The team behind this film had the right idea with the love triange between Briarios, Deunan & Tereus. But its terribly executed and makes Deunan look incredibly shallow, it never really developes at. It just sort of magically fixes itself by the end. No character developement at all, which is shameful in any film. They had plenty of material to work with, to develope all of the above but they didn't.

I can't believe i bought this on blu-ray, i can't fault the picture at least it was pristine, vivid and colourful. So, overall the visuals of the film itself are really nice, there isn't much of an advancement though from the previous film in this regard, the character designs just got a little upgrade and a tweak here and there.

Most of the character designs of people in the background or secondary characters look below average, everything else looks super including the gorgeous backgrounds. The animation is alot nicer, it also has some excellent camera shots.

All the great bits of the film are the little touches that emulate some of John Woo's work like the robotic doves or the slow mo and quick stylish reloading bits. Its nowhere near the excellence of anything directed by John Woo though.

The audio, is nothing too fancy if a little generic, the voice acting in the japanese language is extremly average compared to any other hit anime film you might have seen this year.Explosions and firefights, also didn't have the right punch. The english audio on the other hand is absolutly atrocious, i just couldn't bear it before switching to the original audio track. I would have prefered to listen to it in English as the subtitles on this blu-ray release were really bad, not only does it have dubtitles but the subtitles are so white, that they blend in the background and you can't hardly see them sometimes.

The worst thing about it though, is that i acually spent £20.00 on this movie. Around $40.00 to you lovely people in the good old USofA, i was really expecting a good movie. It makes it hurt ever so much more.

This film should have had the brains of Ghost in the Shell and the dialogue to match it, which is a dead shame. As it had all the right elements to make a classic movie, but they were totally missing from the film. So we got a brainless Sci-fi movie with a little action & stiff acting. STIFF as in DEAD.