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#168 - Johnny Mnemonic
Robert Longo, 1995
In the future, a courier who can store computerised data in his head must go on the run when he acquires an especially high-risk package.
I don't think science-fiction cinema gets much more '90s than Johnny Mnemonic, a William Gibson-based cyberpunk tale that sees Keanu Reeves play into his most unfortunate acting stereotypes as the eponymous anti-hero who gets caught up in a deadly cat-and-mouse game after a job goes wrong. The resulting film is definitely not worth more than the sum of its parts - it's a barely-comprehensible chase where any engaging with the thematic implications is tangential at best. However, I do have to marvel at it for being such a fine example of how bizarre sci-fi could get in the mid-'90s. The extremely lurid attempts to render cyberspace using rather primitive-looking computer effects are noteworthy, as is the grim yet colourful depiction of this global dystopia and its bizarre population. What does intrigue me is the rather bizarre cast that gets assembled around Reeves. The idea of a film that features the likes of Takeshi Kitano, Dolph Lundgren, and Henry Rollins (among many others) is truly an absurd one; if nothing else, they all get some roles that allow for decent amounts of scenery-chewing. As a result, Johnny Mnemonic is more or less what I expected - a charmingly dated curiosity that's worth watching for the sheer weirdness of it all, but that only goes so far towards making it especially worthwhile.
Robert Longo, 1995
In the future, a courier who can store computerised data in his head must go on the run when he acquires an especially high-risk package.
I don't think science-fiction cinema gets much more '90s than Johnny Mnemonic, a William Gibson-based cyberpunk tale that sees Keanu Reeves play into his most unfortunate acting stereotypes as the eponymous anti-hero who gets caught up in a deadly cat-and-mouse game after a job goes wrong. The resulting film is definitely not worth more than the sum of its parts - it's a barely-comprehensible chase where any engaging with the thematic implications is tangential at best. However, I do have to marvel at it for being such a fine example of how bizarre sci-fi could get in the mid-'90s. The extremely lurid attempts to render cyberspace using rather primitive-looking computer effects are noteworthy, as is the grim yet colourful depiction of this global dystopia and its bizarre population. What does intrigue me is the rather bizarre cast that gets assembled around Reeves. The idea of a film that features the likes of Takeshi Kitano, Dolph Lundgren, and Henry Rollins (among many others) is truly an absurd one; if nothing else, they all get some roles that allow for decent amounts of scenery-chewing. As a result, Johnny Mnemonic is more or less what I expected - a charmingly dated curiosity that's worth watching for the sheer weirdness of it all, but that only goes so far towards making it especially worthwhile.