Metascore

Generally favorable reviews - based on 26 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 38 Ratings

  • Starring: Akio Ôtsuka, Atsuko Tanaka, Tamio Ôki
  • Summary: Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence is set in 2032, when the line between humans and machines has been blurred almost beyond distinction. Batou, a cyborg detective for the government's covert anti-terrorist unit, is investigating the case of a gynoid - a hyper-realistic female robot created specifically for sexual companionship - who malfunctions and slaughters her owner. (Go Fish Pictures) Collapse
  • Director: Mamoru Oshii
  • Genre(s): Action, Sci-Fi, Drama, Thriller, Fantasy, Animation
  • Rating: PG-13
  • Runtime: 100 min
  • More Details and Credits »
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 26
  2. Negative: 1 out of 26
  1. Reviewed by: M. E. Russell
    100
    Innocence revisits imagery from the first film. But this time computer animation pumps everything up to epic proportions. The results are overwhelming.
  2. Reviewed by: Kevin Crust
    80
    The dark sequel offers gorgeous images, with an updated and stylish design, but its characters' angst gets in the way of storytelling.
  3. Reviewed by: David Hughes
    60
    The visuals are an animation student's wet dream, the dialogue an English student's nightmare - but for Japanimation fans it's a big-screen must-see.
  4. Ghost suffers most from a distinct lack of anything, well, cinematic.

See all 26 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 16 out of 21
  2. Negative: 3 out of 21
  1. The sequel of one of the most intriguing and best written science fiction anime ever, that Ghost in the shell that in 1995 revolutionized forever the way of painting cyberpunk: despite this huge responsibility on its shoulders, this 2004 second act is still able to create perfect, dark and oppressive cyberpunk atmospheres and give them life with solid action and dialogues. Essentially, the best way the brand could go on without prostituting its true nature. Expand
  2. CodyK.
    8
    A very mature movie that can be best categorized as a psychological drama. The drama overpowers the thriller aspect, in my opinion. Not only can you find great depth in the story, but the characters Expand
  3. 6
    Visually glorious, but the imbalance between it's philosophical pretensions , the visual poetry and the action ultimately fail to maintain a proper rhythm to keep the audience interested in all those metaphorical symbols. Expand
  4. After the original Ghost in the Shell, one of the most highly regarded animated films of all time, they made this movie. This movie is absolutely horrible. I don't want to refer to it by name because it doesn't deserve the title. The pacing is slower than glacial, the dialogue consists entirely of pretentious quote-centric diatribes, the plot and story don't make any sense, some sequences seemingly exist only to confuse the viewer and derail the story while adding nothing to the film. The movie clearly had an insane budget, because the movie takes every single possible opportunity to fellate itself and show off the animation, which is kind of funny because the computer drawn animation is horrible compared to the original's hand-drawn animation. This seriously ranks among the worst movies I've ever seen, it's boring, it's pretentious, it makes no sense, it's almost unwatchable. 2 points go out for the animation and Kenji Kawai's great soundtrack. Expand

See all 21 User Reviews