Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

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nTitle: Johnny Mnemonic (1994)

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nDirector: Robert Longo

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nCast: Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier, Takeshi Kitano, DolphnLungdren, Henry Rollins, Ice –T, Dina Meyer

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nUniversally panned by critics and a bonafide box office bomb,nJohnny Mnemonic was a disaster financially, it made roughly 19 million on anbudget of 26, this even though it starred Keanu Reeves, an actor whose careernwas smoking red hot at that particular moment in time. You see, Reeves had justnfinished making Jan De Bont’s Speed (1994) when he decided to jump on thenJohnny Mnemonic bandwagon. Speed was an extremely successful film at the box officenand a great career move for Keanu; it raised his status as an actor by turningnhim into box office gold. So considering how popular Reeves was at the time,nwhy did Johnny Mnemonic end up being such an epic fail? It certainly wasn’t becausenof lack of star power. The film also starred Dolph Lungdren as a crazynhomicidal preacher, Udo Kier as a techno agent, Henry Rollins and Ice-T asnrebel leaders and Takeshi Kitano (of Sonatine fame) as the head of a an evil corporation. Maybe the film failed because it wasn’t that good? Could it be thatnit disappointed audiences or hardcore cyberpunk fans somehow?

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nIn the film Johnny Mnemonic is a courier, which is just anfancy word for delivery man. The thing is that the guy is a courier of digitalndata that he carries somewhere in the back of his mind. Problem is the packagenhe’s just uploaded is huge and exceeding storage capacity can kill you! Younsee, in this future a big percentage of humanity is suffering from a deceasencalled N.A.S., which stands for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome.  Basically, N.A.S. is a condition that affectsnthe human nervous system and is caused by the onslaught of electronic devicesnto which humanity is exposed to in a daily basis. Technology is making humanitynsick and it’s because of information overload, airwaves poisoned by technologicalncivilization. Humanity just can’t live without their gadgets. Good thing isnthat there’s a cure, bad thing is that the powers that be don’t want humanitynto have it because they’d rather have people as patients, paying for their costlyntreatments for N.A.S. But wait, there’s hope! A group of rebel scientists arenhell bent on releasing the cure for N.A.S. to the free world! These rebels fightnagainst the system and humanities dependency on technology. From time to timenthey send subversive messages to the masses through television saying thingsnlike “Snatch back your brain zombie, and hold it!” To make everything right allnthey have to do is send the cure from Beijing to New Wark; via courier.  That’s where Johnny Mnemonic comes into play. WillnJohnny make it in time before the overload of information in his brain killsnhim?

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nThis project had many good things going for it, number one,nthe screenplay was written by the ‘father of cyberpunk’ William Gibson. Who’snWilliam Gibson you say, well, he’s the guy responsible for writing the verynfirst cyberpunk novels, novels about technologically suffocated societies innwhich people are more mechanical than human, worlds in which people spend morentime in the virtual world than in the real world. This is a wing of sciencenfiction that focuses on “high tech, low life”. Gibson wrote ‘Neuromancer’ onenof the seminal works of the cyberpunk genre; it’s a story about a hacker who’snhired to pull off the mother of all hacks. The novel takes place in this Blade Runnernlike world with problems like over population and again, a society overndependent on technology. Neuromancer is so thick I’ve yet to finish reading it!nIt’s quite dense, a true challenge to read, and this comes from someone whonfancies himself a science fiction fan! This fascinating and at timesnnightmarish book holds some similarities with Johnny Mnemonic; actually it evennshares some characters. Johnny Mnemonic in turn is a film that’s based on anothernone of Gibson’s works; a short story entitled ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ which was firstnpublished in Omni magazine, and later re-printed in Gibson’s collection ofnshort fiction stories called ‘Burning Chrome’, a book I will be acquiring soon!nJohnny Mnemonic by the way is one of Gibson’s first works, first published waynback in 1981, so it’s fitting in a way that one of his earliest works is thenfirst to get the big screen treatment. 

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nFor the longest time (as far back as 1989) Gibson and hisnpal Robert Lungo (who ended up sitting on the director’s chair) had been tryingnto get funding for Johnny Mnemonic. In their minds, Johnny Mnemonic was a filmnthat could be pulled off for a mere 1.5 million dollars; in other words, theynwanted to take an art house approach to this story; an artsy version of JohnnynMnemonic. A small yet creative film, and I gotta wonder what that film mightnhave turned out like. But it kept getting harder and harder to get anynfinancial backing for the film because studios didn’t like the fact that theynwere trying to make such a small film. Studios like multimillion dollarnproductions with big stars attached to them, something big and bombastic, somethingnthey can sell. Things finally pulled through when Keanu Reeves read the scriptn(which myth has it was left at his door step!) and decided to do the movie. Itnwas then that the studios started offering the millions to Gibson and Lungo. Afternmuch trepidation, the project finally found its funding! So after so many yearsnof trying to get this movie made, was it finally worth it?

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nWell, first things first, there’s no denying that this filmnturned out to be a quite influential piece of cinema. The directors behind ThenMatrix Trilogy; the Wachowski Bros. obviously saw this film and decided theyncould do something similar, but better. It’s just so obvious, damn, right downnto the fact that they also used Keanu Reeves for The Matrix. At one pointnJohnny says his name is “Mr. Smith”, he plugs himself into a virtual world andntravels through it. Keanu dresses with a white shirt, black suit and tie.nJohnny is kind of like a Christ figure, same as Neo. And basically, the wholenfilm has a theme about “waking people up”, so yeah, there’s no doubt this one,nalong with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) served as a major influencenfor The Matrix. Other films that Johnny Mnemonic is similar to? Well, there’s Cyborgn(1989) and Babylon A.D. (2008), two films that are also about a courierntransporting the cure for a decease that’s threatening the world, and most recentlynElysium (2013) played with the same ideas. 

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nJohnny Mnemonic is a film that science fiction fans will nondoubt enjoy because it presents us with this dark, technological world in chaos,nkind of like what we saw in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), but with thenadded element of seeing technology as mankind’s villain, as a detriment to society,na hindrance that disconnects us from our humanity. Which isn’t so farfetchednwhen we consider how connected we all are to our smart phones, I-Pads, I-Podsnand laptops;  so in many ways it’s a reflectionnof our society and how addicted we are to technology, could we live without it nowadays?nHow lost would we be on this planet without our technological advances? Hasnhumanity separated itself so much from the natural world, that we now don’tneven know how to survive in it? I mean we actually live in a time when goingnout to dinner means telling everybody on the table to turn their phones off sonwe won’t be distracted by a call, a text message or candy crush. Aside from thenfilms themes, I also enjoy a lot of the visuals that a movie like this one hasnto offer. I mean, how cool does Johnny Mnemonic look hooked up to that VirtualnReality helmet? Very cool that’s how cool. Like Hackers (1995), The Matrix (1999),nthis is a movie that hackers no doubt love, because the hacker is the hero.nSome of the best moments in the film are those of Johnny, hooking up to theninformation super highway and just hacking the hell out of it.

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nBut then the movie is hampered by often time’s cheesy dialognand nonsensical shenanigans. Sometimes the film kind of contradicts itself, fornexample, there’s this dolphin in the movie that is supposed to be the savior ofnhumanity because it’s the dolphin who handles all the data through its brain,nbut then the rebels, those who would fight for humanity and freedom, have thisndolphin confined to this little tank that gives it no space to swim at all. Tonme, the dolphin looks like its being tortured, trapped in this cage filled withndirty water, then they also have the dolphin strapped to a helmet that forbidsnit from seeing. So we have a blind dolphin who can’t swim because the good guysnneed to use him? Peta would have a field day with these guys! Which brings mento another point about the film, at times it feels like the good guys aren’tnreally all that good, take Johnny for example, sure he’s carrying the cure onnhis noggin, but does he really have to stop and rant about wanting “roomnservice and 10,000 dollars a night whores”? I guess the point is that Johnny hasnto learn that it’s not just about him anymore, that he has to learn to donthings for others, but damn does he come off as self centered. Then we got thenleader of the rebels played by Ice-T, and well, his performance isn’t much of anstretch considering how he played basically the same character in Tank Girl (1995).nThe most over the top performance has to be Dolph Lundgren as the crazynpreacher. He is really crazy, managing to fuse Jesus with the psychotic. Hencarries a crucifix around that could double as Rambo’s knife! He also spewsnhilarious one liners like “It’s Jesus Time!” A funny performance and certainlynnot what you’d expect from Dolph Lundgren.  

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nAnd now a word about the computer graphics on this show. There’snthis moment in which Johnny enters cyberspace and we see him controlling hisnjourney from the real world (sounds like The Matrix don’t it?), well, thengraphics in those scenes are interesting, but unfortunately by today’snstandards look outdated, they do their job of telling a story, but feel truly ancient,nkind of like the computer generated imagery in Lawnmower Man (1992). They mightnhave been “dazzling!” in their day, but now these graphics seem like child play,nstill, this didn’t stop my enjoyment of the film. One has to expect fx tonoutdate, I mean, time passes after all. Final words on Johnny Mnemonic is thatnit’s a cool little movie, not a masterpiece but at least it has its coolnvisuals and that delicious cyberpunk feel that I wish Hollywood would exploitnjust a bit more. In my opinion, there aren’t enough cyberpunk films out there. Incan’t comment on how faithful the film is to the short story, but at least wenknow the film was written by William Gibson himself; if it fails it’s by JohnnynMnemonics creator’s own fault! Then again, this was one of those films that thenstudio took from the filmmakers and re-edited to their liking, so this mightnhave something to do with certain inconsistencies. But whatever, faithful tonthe story or not, I think Johnny Mnemonic has a couple of cool things going fornit that makes it worth a re-watch. Also, if you ask me, the film remains anseminal work of cyberpunk cinema, that’s gotta count for something.

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nRating: 3 1/2 out of 5

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