Movie review by Dennis D. McDonald

It’s 2074 in Belgrade. Female student Edit procures an illicit electronic implant to help her pass her final Psychology exams at the local university. She then finds herself and her friends entangled with massive problems involving an AI doppelganger, industrial espionage, drugs, sex, airborne skateboard chases, and a recognizable future where people and machines exist side-by-side.

It’s like watching the second coming of Moebius’ Airtight Garage but much more down to earth. Plus, it’s much less pretentious than Mamoru Oshii’s Avalon.

The down-to-earthness is both a strength and weakness.

On the positive side we have the recognizability provided by slacker friends, drug use, nudity, sex, and cleverly rendered familiar urban landscape of an old European city in 2074, coupled with technologies and robots impinging on everything. That’s all fun.

On the negative side we have a plot driven by one more of those vast government industrial conspiracies. This time the McGuffin is a mathematical model of some sort that will provide its owner with “vast unlimited etc. etc.” and so forth. Fans of Ghost in the Shell, Steamboy, The Matrix, and Paprika will recognize all this.

On balance, though, the good FAR outweighs the bad, especially how technology is interwoven with daily life (baby strollers, skid row derelicts, cemeteries, police chases, pornography, stuffed animals, motorboats, etc.)

Edit herself is an interesting mix of naïveté, intelligence, raw energy, and stubbornness. Why she hangs out with the losers she does is never fully explained but, taken together, they make up a very entertaining ride that has some of the most interesting technology animation this side of WALL•E.

Review copyright © 2014 by Dennis D. McDonald