Johnny Mnemonic
Year of release : 1995
Run time : 1h37m
Genre : Sci Fi / Action / Cyberpunk
Cast : Keanu Reeves, Dina Meyer, Ice T, Udo Kier, Dolph Lundgren, Henry Rollins
The movie was based on the William Gibson 1981 short story of the same name.
The year is 2021, corporations rule and are defended by the Yakuza, the world has a new plague, Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, called short, NAS. The opposition is the Loteks,a resistance movement of hackers,data pirates and guerilla fighters in the info wars.
Valuable information is entrusted to mnemonic couriers, agents who have wet wired brain implants.
Johnny is such a courier, who gave up his childhood memories to be able to transport sensitive data for big corporations. He talks to his agent, Ralfi, who tells him his new job is to retrieve data from a group of scientists in Beijing, and transport it to Newark,USA. They also talk about how Johnny wants out, and wants to take the implant out of his head, and get his memories back.
At the hotel in Beijing, Johnny checks his memory capacity of 80 gigabytes and doubles it, being warned about not exceeding it.
When he enters the hotel room, Johnny notices how the people there are not the usual type of clients he normally has.
The scientists tell him their data has a capacity of 320 gigabytes, and he lies to them he can store it. Thing is he can, but it would damage his brain if he keeps it in his head for more than 2 days.
After the upload, Johnny goes to the bathroom feeling sick, and the Yakuza members come, guns blazing, k1lling everyone. Johnny is the only one who manages to escape, putting on a disguise while leaving the hotel room.
In Newark, Johnny talks to his agent from the taxi, via a video call, and when he hangs up we see his agent is at a club. He is approached by a crazy woman, Jane, who is fighting his guards demanding him to hire her, because that’s how you make someone trust you and hire you. He asks her to hold her arm up, and because she has cybernetic implants, her arm starts shaking. Ralfi tells her since she has the shakes of the NAS disease, he can’t hire her.
She follows him when he meets with Johnny, and Johnny gets the surprise of his life when he finds out Ralfi works with the Yakuza who want to k1ll him and get his head to take it to PharmaKom.
Luckily for him, Jane is spying through the ventilation system, and jumps onto them, rescuing him.
The Yakuza member k1lls Ralfi.
Johnny escapes with Jane after he offers her 50.000 dollars to help him. Jane stays with him because he doesn’t have cash, and she doesn’t have a card.
She takes him to a place with a computer, so he could get online, and call Beijing. While he does that, the Yakuza track him in the virtual reality and release a virus in cyberspace. Talking to one of his people, Johnny finds out he is carrying PharmaKom data.
Because his best man can’t find Johnny, the Yakuza boss contacts Karl, the street preacher, a cybernetically enhanced assassin who quotes the Bible. He tells him if he can give him Johnny’s head in 24 hours he’ll triple the fee.
Johnny calls PharmaKom telling them he has their data in his head, and wants it out of his head. He arranges a meeting with them, but Jane tells him they’ll k1ll him.
As she talks, Jane gets the shakes, so he takes her to her friend, Spider, who can help both of them.
I personally didn’t like the movie. I found it ridiculous. I didn’t like how it looked, the world created, a dystopia divided between corporations and gangs. It looked cheap and ugly.
The women were bodyguards while the men had no idea how to fight!
I do find it interesting to see what people thought the world would look like today, 30-40 years ago.
The movie is completely different from its short story version, although the screenplay was written by the writer, William Gibson.
The acting was bad. I don’t know what kind of directions the actors received, for I saw most of them in other movies and they were fine, but they were all awful in this movie, over acting and over reacting. They were like caricatures in comic book movies.
The soundtrack started well, but after 15 minutes turned really bad.
The visual effects were bad.
The movie grossed a little over 52 million dollars at the box office, against a production budget of 26 million dollars.
The movie received negative reviews from critics. Cinema Score audiences graded the movie a C+.
Val Kilmer was first attached to the project to play Johnny but eventually left the project.
You can watch the full movie for free on the Ok.Ru platform.
Rating : Could have been a contender !