Johnny Mnemonic

Johnny Mnemonic

Starring Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Ice-T, Dolph Lundgren

Directed by Robert Longo

The Story:
In 2021, some people are known as "mnemonic carriers," people who have had their memories erased and implanted a way to transfer important data through the use of their brain.  Johnny (Keanu Reeves) is one of those people, and is tasked with carrying highly sensitive information from Beijing to Newark, but the information is so big that it can literally blow his mind if he doesn't release it in a few days.

He's tracked by the Yakuza, under direction of Pharmakom Corporation leader Takahashi (Takeshi Kitano), who doesn't want the information released.  With the help of Jane (Dina Meyer), a cybernetically-enhanced bodyguard, Johnny attempts to get the information to J-Bone (Ice-T) before being assassinated by the Yakuza or the Street Preacher (Dolph Lundgren), another mercenary hired by Takahashi.

The Synopsis:
There are films out there that need no introduction, no need for a proper review because they don't take themselves seriously enough to warrant one.  That's the case of "Johnny Mnemonic," a film so outlandishly stupid and over-the-top that it can't even begin to take itself seriously, so why should we?  This is a guilty pleasure movie, a film you want to watch with friends so you can all sit around and laugh at the utter outlandish way the film was conceived, concocted, and performed.  There's nothing about this film that screams "Oscar-worthy" - heck, there's nothing about this film that screams "good" - but it still manages to be enjoyable due to its outlandish premise.

The film itself is based off a novel by William Gibson, who's known as the father of cyberpunk fiction, but even he has disavowed this film, saying it strayed way too far from the source material to make sense.  He has a point - this film doesn't make a single lick of sense.  Yet, as I said before, it's still fun.

Keanu Reeves stars as Johnny, who wants memories of his childhood back, so he does one last assignment to transfer data encrypted in his mind before his mind explodes due to the over-capacity level the information contains.  He's also hunted by Yakuza and the Street Preacher, who's the most unintentionally (or maybe intentionally, I can't tell) hilarious hit man ever.  Reeves glides on his natural charisma, and even he seems to know how insane the film is, and dives headfirst into it.  There's one particular speech that Reeves gives that is pure gold, and doing it in script hardly does it justice, but here it goes anyway:

"Listen. You listen to me. You see that city over there? THAT'S where I'm supposed to be. Not down here with the dogs, and the garbage, and the f****** last month's newspapers blowing *back* and *forth*. I've had it with them, I've had it with you, I've had it with ALL THIS - *I want ROOM SERVICE*! I want the club sandwich, I want the cold Mexican beer, I want a $10,000-a-night hooker! I want my shirts laundered... like they do... at the Imperial Hotel... in Tokyo."

That's just one of the many unforgettable lines in the film, most of which belong to Dolph Lundren's wildly appropriately named character Street Preacher.  He goes around dressed like Jesus, wielding a crucifix-dagger (which I've coined the "crucagger"), and spouting some of the best one-liners I've heard in awhile, including the now-classic "Halt sinners" and "it's Jesus time!"  While Lundren seemed to have fun with his role, this film caused him to go into early retirement until he came back again in 2010's "The Expendables."

When it comes to the action, this is a laughingstock of 90s effects.  You can clearly tell there's an over-abundance of green screens used, the guns are literally paintball guns (some even having the markings of said paintball guns still on them), and the deaths are so abundantly over-the-top it's utterly laughable.  Mix that in with "special effects" (I use that term in quotations because the effects here are anything but special, more like "why bother?"), some of the worst continuity errors imaginable (a scene where Street Preacher crucifies a man finds him reaching for one knife, and then another...but it's the same knife!), and some of the poorest edits known to man, and you've got the makings of a great film that has nothing great about it except the strong desire to be mocked from start to finish.

Oddly enough, this was also the final film for director Robert Longo - not because he died, but because he simply stopped directing.  I guess once you direct one of the biggest laughingstock films in modern memory, it's hard to come back from that. 

The Summary:
A terribly explained plot, overly outdated effects, chronic failures in editing, and simple continuity errors make "Johnny Mnemonic" a film that's so bad it's good, a film that deserves all the scorn and ridicule you can muster if you can find yourself sitting through the entirety of it.

The Score: D-