Review of Johnny Mnemonic (1995) by Sergel C — 02 Sep 2011

This movie's one I saw as a kid and it stuck with me. It's similar to Escape from LA, Hackers, and Dark Angel in tone, setting, and quality but weirder.

CHILDHOOD SPOILERIFFIC REVIEW.

Some of what doesn't work can be attributed to the lead's inability to act but I don't think all the blame can be placed on adaptation decay. The abridgement of Gibson's story makes the faults in his writing glaring. Our hero's a courier (not from the Mojave) who carries data in his head using an implant. Even given what was known about tech at the time the book was written, Gibson could reason out how little sense such an idea makes.

Gibson's an author who doesn't plan his stories endings. He doesn't know what's in the important train or what the encoded message is until he's nearly done with the story. Understanding this fact explains how he could allow for a scenario that's so nonsensical for the start.

Some of the basic problems with the courier concept.

1) The internet exists. In the setting as well. Why not send your data encrypted to the party you want to receive it? Or mail it?

2) If the person you're entrusting the data too's supposed to be more secure, why does it have to physically be in his brain? Yes, it could be said that's a final line of security as an external hard-drive, disc, flash stick, or whatever else could be lost/stolen/replaced w/a dummy but these potential risks seem outweighed by the convenience of not needing the implant, paying a more expensive special operative (or atleast investing in an operative with a different skillset) and so on.

3) 80gb is really small. Given, Gibson probably wasn't able to accurately predict modern storage capacity but it needs said.

4) Why does the implant need to replace a portion of the brain? There's no apparent benefit to the procedure, there is a drawback, and a hard-drive could just be implanted in the fat of your ass.

5) The data limit / overload. How can the total amount of data be overloaded? It really seems like Gibson doesn't understand computers for a guy who writes about them so much. How would a device just double his storage space? The best modern compression methods aren't that good. If there's a doubler why can't there be a tripler, quadrupler, etc? Where is the data being stored if it's not being stored in his implant? If the excess data's stored in his brain why does he need an implant? Also, the human mind stores much more data than a computer so why's this relatively tiny bit so destructive?

We don't find out until near the end (and Gibson probably hadn't decided 'til near then either) what the data is: the cure for the pandemic of the future. This undermines the start of the movie further. The guys who stole the data have every incentive to not be covert about it. The only situation where the courier makes any sense is some secret spy intel where the agency sends a message along a string of contacts that he's part of and they'd rather the message be destroyed (can be sent along other channels) than communicated to someone else. But the cure-thieves want to make the cure public; they want everyone in the world to know freely...so why don't they just upload it to the internet from the start? Place it on different sites, send chain-mails w/it as an attachment, put it up as a torrent and a directly downloadable file, etc. Their goal is publicity, the antithesis of secrecy, in direct contradiction of their methodology. That's Gibson's fault, not the movie's.

From Johnny's perspective, why would he take a job he knew would likely kill him? He's saving up for an operation. If he can't do this job there'll be other ones he can take. He has no motivation to take such a huge risk.

The stuff that was distinct enough for me to remember it from childhood was the cyborg-hacker dolphin (an example of why the movie's goofier), the hitman who doesn't act in the Jesus way (part of the violent scenes I fastforwarded through as a tyke), the flaming car being dropped on spider's vehicle, the mind-animation sequences, how poignant the idea of losing your childhood memories was, the code sequence, and that's about it.

It's got Ice Cube (of Tank Girl fame) and Henry Rollins (who gives the best performance in the movie). The redeeming features of this film (the fight choreography's bad too) are it's ensemble cast. There're some neat characters and the world feels a bit wider as we see different people and groups interact. But Keanu's still the lead and that impairs the movie alot. I don't remember him being this bad in The Matrix or Constantine. Maybe he got better or maybe those directors worked around him. Nah, he's much worse in Dracula. He has improved as an actor, from atrocious to ok. Which's makes it odd: why was an actor as poor as him given so many starring roles while a guy with an established fanbase (Black Flag) and better chops like Rollins hasn't broken into the industry? Why're all the bodyguards chicks or trannies?