Review of Johnny Mnemonic (1995) by Eric H — 19 Mar 2014

I found it extremely stupid. It seemed like it was supposed to be comedic in its outlandishness, but all the laughs are unintentional. Reeves is at his worst in this, his lines sounding more forced than ever before or after. I suppose there's a reason he is always cast in films that take place in alternate realities: because he is not a convincing typical human being. Rollins as a doctor is pure miscast hell. Same goes for the revolutionary that Ice-T plays. Lundgren, on the other hand, is very entertaining as the villain, as long as you don't take him seriously.

The future stuff is pretty much ridiculous, especially the brain capacity stuff, although it is funny that reeves brain can initially only hold 80 gigs, making his brain a bit more powerful than a video ipod. Another dated reference is when Ice-T tells the world to "get your VCRs ready." Couldn't the filmmakers have come up with something other than VCR to say? DVDs were only a few years away from the date of this film, and wouldn't they have developed something new by then when they were capable of expanding memories by tampering with people's brains?

There is one cool future item - the laser string one of the villains has. It makes for some pretty cool action scenes.

I read that there is a better extended cut that seems like a ocmpletely different movie, but I just don't see how more could possibly be better in the case of this stupid crap.