Well, it's sort of a sequel, anyway. Ex Machina's creators are quick to emphasize that it has no real connections to the first film, but the characters are the same: Deunan Knute's a brazen young cop, Briareos Hecatonchires is her blunt-natured boyfriend who was mangled in combat and stuck inside a massive cyborg body with rabbit ears, and the two of them gun down malcontents in the futuristic city of Olympus. And there's a race of genetically engineered pacifist people called bio-roids, created to fill Olympus and perhaps even replace those troublingly emotional humans.

If the first Appleseed film resembled a pretty video game, Ex Machina wears that label with pride. The opening battle between some terrorists and Deunan's ES.W.A.T. unit is all but a first level, complete with a predictable, minigun-hefting boss. During this impressive mass of explosions, gunfire and acrobatics, Briareos is injured. As he recuperates, Deunan's partnered with Tereus, a bio-roid cop that the Olympus authorities created from Briareos's genes. It's not quite Turner and Hooch, but no one's happy with the arrangement: Briareos resents a bio-roid who looks just like his pre-accident self, Tereus hates being a clone, and Deunan finds herself attracted to Tereus for no reason beyond good, old-fashioned sex appeal.

Their rather inert love triangle is rapidly pushed aside by the expected Major Terrorist Threat: a bizarre virus is infecting Olympus residents, spreading slowly from easily hackable cyborgs to humans, affecting everyone from Deunan's cutesy bio-roid friend Hitomi to Briareos' pal Arges. The outbreaks only get worse as the city attracts delegates for a global summit, and icy Olympus prime minister Athena starts to suspect the Japan-ish Poseidon conglomerate and its stuffy ambassador. They aren't the real villains, of course.

It may be a unique-looking anime import with a mainstay of Hong Kong cinema attached, but Ex Machina is cut wholly from the vapid realm of blockbuster filmmaking. The interplay between Deunan and her two Briareoses (Briareosi?) is superficial in concept and execution, and the larger story leads only to predictable turns of plot and some laughable attempts at pathos; there's more to drama than simply having characters scream. And, for that matter, there's more to science fiction that what Ex Machina attempts. The sci-fi here exists just so Briareos can have creepy virus-veins pulsing beneath his skin. His metal skin.

But it feels odd to criticize Ex Machina for its banal script and mindless leaps of logic, seeing as how no one's selling the movie on its romantic and cerebral layers. Ex Machina's here to make things explode, to show robots bashing each other apart in mid-air, and to stage one rapid, enticing firefight after another. And it does just that; a brawl between Deunan and a rogue construction robot plays out in wonderfully overblown style, and a massive assault on the Final Boss' floating fortress turns into a pastiche of The Matrix and the collected works of James Cameron.

Really, it'd be more convenient for him to just go naked. More dignified, too.

It's both moronic and stunning, especially now that Aramaki's shined up the cel-shaded look of the first film. While robotic mannerisms bog down some lesser-seen characters, there's no such uncanny valley when our heroes are leaping and backflipping and shooting anything remotely hostile. Much has been made of Woo's involvement, but it's clear that Aramaki also benefited from bringing in directors like Kazuyoshi Katayama (The Big O) and Seiji Mizushima (Fullmetal Alchemist) for storyboard work. The film's action is swift, clean, and satisfying in its entirely shameless fashion.

Ex Machina seems even dumber than the original film, which at least grasped (and fumbled) some philosophical themes. But it's not. Ex Machina knows what it is, and it knows that its story is a mere excuse for all the fiery chaos. It also knows enough to have fun with the whole mess. Aramaki and his apparently neophyte screenwriters inject a glimmer of personality into Deunan and Briareos, who show traces of an actual relationship this time around. They also toss in a few amusing moments: any scene with Briareos in a tuxedo or a leather jacket is inherent comedy, as are the outfits designed by Miuccia Prada, which you'd never notice if the perspective didn't spend a good minute crawling up Deunan's Prada-conceived dress. And then there's the Hitler cameo.

Explanation: the villain uses this face to disguise himself as a technician and sneak into the Olympus computer network's data stores. Subtle, no?

The film's jumpy, unobtrusive soundtrack is a letdown, lacking the Boom Boom Satellites, Paul Oakenfold, and other artists from the original movie's electronica score (they've apparently jumped to the upcoming Vexille). Yet the Japanese performances are decent enough, while the English dub, supplied by ADV Films, is sturdy despite some lip-syncing slips, and Luci Christian's an excellent Deunan. The DVD release is also quite thorough in its language selections, though the subtitle track appears to be just the English dub script. I think fans call that “dubtitled.”

Ex Machina's little more than a hollow eye-candy coating. Amid all the shooting and yelling and crashing and emoting, there's no core to be found. Perhaps the problem is Appleseed itself; it's the dullest of Shirow's major works, and it's eclipsed in both style and depth by Ghost in the Shell. Yet there's at least something to see in Ex Machina, even if it's just a big, beautiful explosion and the implied promise that they'll get it right next time.