Review of Johnny Mnemonic (1995) by Leslie R — 17 Jun 2015

Ever since I first saw "Blade Runner," I've been waiting for another film to capture the film's dystopian cyberpunk future. Plenty of films have been influenced by Ridley Scott's visual style in "Blade Runner," but few have done a story that feels like it could have existed in that same dystopian universe and William Gibson's screenplay adaptation of his short story certainly does (the Max Headroom TV show if probably the only other one that I think came close).

However, the cheap production design, the flat photography and rather in-your-face directorial style wreck all the potential that was in the screenplay. Keanu Reeves plays a courier of sensitive data who unexpectedly takes on a dangerous job that ends up putting him on the run from multiple groups trying to recover the information.

That set-up isn't so clever, but what is clever are all of Gibson's details in the world in which this story takes place. Keanu stores the data in his brain (for which he had to dump his childhood memories make enough space for), "Rising Sun" style Japanese cultural and economic invasion of America, underground hackers/doctors, religious zealot hitmen, renegade military trained dolphins, and there is even more! While the story and ideas are strong and the production quantity flounders.

I will give the film props for casting Takeshi Kitano and Udo Kier in juicy roles and also for the unusual casting of Dolph Lundgren as the giant Bible quoting killer, which surprisingly works. This story is ripe for a quality remake because it could have been done so much better.

I do think the end product here is worth watching and not at bad as it was panned as when it first came out, but it's pretty clear that this film had a lot more potential than what ended up on screen.