I've seen this movie at least 5 times since it came out 16 years ago. Aside from Disney cartoons and other kid movies that I grew up on, I can't say that about hardly any movies. Why this one? Because it is awesome.
Basic formula: Blade Runner + Akira
Both of those films have a cyberpunk feel to them, and this film cribs the hell out of them, and all for the good. The plot rundown, if you haven't seen it or haven't seen it for awhile, is this: a special-ops cyborg with a human soul (called a ghost) confronts what amounts to be an arch-enemy, what it means to be "human" especially in an age of cybernetic enhancements, and the purpose of existence all in a most fantastically beautiful 90 minutes.
I would say more about the plot--in fact, I had a couple drafts of that paragraph before the final version--but I don't want to spoil too much. The themes that this film deal with though are powerful, especially as humanity begins its ascent out of the physical body. To some extent, we've been doing this for centuries, slowly, first in oral traditions, the legends of mythical men, women, and gods existing not in reality but in the words of people. Then more "people" were brought into existence on paper, and now with the one-two punch of the internet and the emerging biotechnical field of science, "people" or versions of ourselves at least are created and destroyed in real-time online, and bits of metal and electricity and plastic are simultaneously altering our bodies to help us--and then by extention, our multiple virtual personae--live longer. Disagree? 1) is the "you" on your facebook profile actually representative of your entire self, or only a part--a version--that you want to portray? 2) pacemakers and prosthetic limbs have been around for ages now, it doesn't have to be all sciencey-fictiony.
Set after two more world wars--one nuclear, one not--the film (and its sequel, and the comics it is based on, and the 2 TV series that follow the second film) portrays a world in which everything has changed and nothing has changed. Technology has advanced in the film to literally build an entire human being, and to augment those popped out of a vagina. Yet the people in the film live their lives, do their jobs, have their families. They haven't discovered the great mysteries of the universe, or of humanity itself. What, really, is a person? A collection of memories stuffed inside a brain which makes some bone and sinew move? Is it personality plus phenotype? Watching Motoko--a cyborg, remember--experience a profound existential crisis is an exercise in self-examination and, for lack of a better term, truth-seeking.
One word about the visual style of the film: gorgeous. Literally, that one word. Aside from all of the cool tech and the action and the character design itself, for me the most stunning are the backgrounds. Many of the buildings and city-scapes shown in the film are only on screen for a couple seconds, yet each background was hand-painted with such care and attention to detail that it boggles the mind. It is to the director's great credit that the camera often lingers on the atmosphere-building visuals, because they are simply wonderous to behold. Here's a few high def samples to send you off with:
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