Johnny Mnemonic

Usually when you watch a sci-fi film, the first half usually piques your interest only to sink into a confusing and badly written second half ("Star Trek V" comes to mind.). "Johnny Mnemonic" has the unique distinction of having a rather bad first half being saved by the second half. There were moments of badly delivered lines and situations, which I fully blame the director for. There were cuts where the demeanor of Keanu Reeves changed confusingly. Again I blame the director and continuity supervisor. There was, IMHO, more gore than necessary. But that's a matter of taste. And, to make matters worse, I wasn't sure of what I was watching.

There was a LOT of good things about the movie. It told a sci-fi story about a dark and bleak future....somewhat similar to "Blade Runner". And it did it well. There were an amazing amount of sets, extras, and really well done computer effects. There was even one really well filmed shot in a hospital that reminded me of the long scene from "Gone With The Wind" showing the dead and dying in the Atlanta train yard. Many of the secondary actors (especially Henry Rollins as "Spider" and Ice-T as "J-Bone") were surprisingly good and helped to raise my rating of the film from an initial 4.0 to an overall 7.0 rating.

If you aren't into a lot of foul language and/or gore, I'd steer clear of this film. But if you want to see a surprisingly well made piece of dark sci-fi, this is a film worth giving a chance to watch.

I saw half of this movie on television once, and since I am a avid sci-fi fan, the story intrigued me. A couple of weeks later I went out to pick up a copy of this movie for myself, and ever since I've been watching it every now and then. Not every month, but at least once every 4 or 5 months. Sometimes more. There's just something about it that I like. Well, lets start from the beginning:

It is the year 2021 and the world has been taken over by large coorporations that do pretty much what they want to. Most of them are out to make money, however, and will do anything to achieve that goal. One of these coorporations is PharmaCom, a coorporation that deals in medicine and exists pretty much all over the world. From Beijing to Newark. 'Johnny' is a Mnemonic courier who carries an implant in his brain which allows him to carry a large amount of data there. But when he accepts a job where he is overloaded with data, he is not only experiencing trouble with getting rid of the data, but also finds that several bounty hunters and crime organizations are after his head and the information stored within. Over 24 hours he jumps around in the city of Newark, trying to find a way to get rid of the data and the bounty hunters.

A touch in this movie that many might recognize from the film 'The Matrix' is that in this movie they tend to hook themselves up to the internet, which has become a virtual reality like, àlà The Lawnmower man. But in the end of the film, Keanu's character completly hooks himself up to the internet for a short amount of time, walking around in it and controlling his actions as if he was in another world. Pretty much like he did in the Matrix. Wierd, huh?

The film presents a very interesting vision of the future. Coorporations, crime syndicates, virtual-reality, futuristic weapons and the like. The sets look authentic and the look and feel of the film is top-notch. The music seems to fit the mood at all times, too, which is a big plus. The characters are likeable and unique in their own way, but with one exception. Keanu Reeves plays 'Johnny' without any life or energy put into it and delivers his lines flat and in the most boring way. His worst acting job ever? Perhaps. You could tell he didn't like this movie very much.

Overall, its a very interesting sci-fi flick which has its ups and downs. The upsides is the setting, the music, the vision of the future etc. etc. while the downsides are Keanu Reeve's acting and sometimes lack of interest in what happens next in the movie. I give it a 7/10.

One Friday night in early 1994, I was one of the hundreds of extras who was hired to be moving scenery for this film. Basically, they convincingly turned Toronto's fabled Union Station into some post-apocalyptic hospice, in which we were all supposed to be shuffling around, getting food and suffering from some neurological disease. It's always amusing to see what filmmakers do to disguise Toronto as something else, to make it look like it takes place anywhere else other than (gasp) Canada. Still, whenever I go to Union Station, I am impressed with the makeover this location got.

I was anxious to see whether I made in the final cut or not, but the film's release kept on getting pushed back and pushed back. That is a sure sign that the movie is going to be a turkey. Well, it isn't terrible. William Gibson expanded his own short story-- so much so that the film is actually a mess. A beautiful looking one, however. Longo and DOP Francois Protat do a serviceable job in capturing the "plastic noir" of the future. But ultimately the movie suffers from having too many ideas-- some of them ludicrous, many of them poorly developed. It doesn't help either that the drama of the piece relies on the thespian abilities of Keanu Reeves or Dolph Lundgren. Yikes! Even so, Henry Rollins is pretty cool.

But for me, the great suspense was seeing whether or not I ended up on the cutting room floor. So for about two seconds, you get to see my face in a crowd shot. See? See? Wait! Damn!

All things considered, this film probably does exactly what it sets out to do. Unfortunately the people behind it set their sights too low. There is so much movie-making potential in Gibsons writing, that this film could very easily have been both entertaining AND carried the depth of his literature. I was left with the feeling that Gibson thought: -"Well, this is going to be my one chance at getting my work on the big screen. So I'd better stick a little bit of everything I've made in it." Too many of the characters taken from his fiction get mistreated by the script: Ralfi, Molly Millions, the-guy-with-the-monowire-thumb, Johnny. Whereas the new ones, like Spider and the Street Preacher are much more entertaining. For example: One of the central ideas in the short story was that Johnny is "a very technical boy" - totally reliant on technology - and therefore actually needs Molly's muscle-power to protect him. Aside from one initial rescue, Johnny actually saves his own bodyguard more times than she helps him (with anything!) Maybe Keanu has a "Heroism Clause" of his own, like Kevin Kostner... :) A pleasant surprise though, was the appearance of Takeshi Kitano (even if it was a small part.)

My favourite scene is Johnnys rant on the rubbish heap. I know it is contrary to the intent of the scene, but I sympathise completely with his feelings. He had sacrificed something that most people hold sacred, in order to live a certain lifestyle, and it gets taken away from him completely undeservedly - no wonder he feels cheated.

If you really want Gibsonesque cyberpunk, go for _New Rose Hotel (1998) _ instead.

This silly cluttered cyberpunk landscape is woefully dated and really just a backdrop for a man on the run picture. Like a B noir, Johnny takes a job that finds himself in over his head, where that head of his is carrying 320gb of data(!) that the Yakuza wants to tear off his shoulders. Keanu Reeves and Dina Meyer add to the cheese with their bland presence and occasionally funny/bad acting and we get some weird scenery chewing from Udo Kier and Dolph Lundgren, who is a Jesus freak bounty hunter also out for Johnny's head. Takeshi Kitano is wasted in a role that doesn't do much, except sit around waiting for others to retrieve his data and his casting seems motivated only for foreign sales. Ice-T plays the lead Lo-Tek, an anti-tech group trying to bring down the system and his role is practically the same (minus the kangaroo makeup) in his other 1995 sci-fi film Tank Girl. Even though Johnny Mnemonic is pretty damn stupid, it is entertaining no matter how misguided it may be and it is one misguided movie. There's a data decoding dolphin; some girl's soul stuck in a corporate computer system; a long and pointless opening credit scroll - since there's loads of expository dialogue explaining everything anyway; laser whips - which seems as dangerous for the user as the victim; and a trip inside the internet, complete with awesome mid 90s virtual reality effects - think Lawnmower Man fx, just slightly less embarrassing. Gibson and director Robert Longo damn the studio for re-editing the film before release, but I can't imagine this footage working no matter what was cut out or shifted around, but as it is, this is dumb pulpy fun.