Review of Johnny Mnemonic (1995) by Filius S — 13 Dec 2015

Johnny Mnemonic is the story of Keanu Reeves in the future, where he has part of his brain allocated to store data... a whopping 80 gigs of it, which he uses to transfer clandestine information across borders. On what is supposed to be a routine job in China, he takes on double his normal capacity, being all "ayy, it's cool" even though it kinda fucks him up handling that much info. Before he can give a shit about that though, the guys who hired him get lit up by a team of assassins, and Keanu's on the run to deliver the goods before he ends up in the same cyber boat. Back in Newark, he discovers a giant conspiracy thing, and meets a cool cast of characters, including Ice-T who plays an underground revolutionary named Lo-Tek, Takeshi Kitano who plays the head of a giant corporation, Dolph Lundgren who plays a crazed religious fanatic who murders people, and a Dolphin in a fish tank hooked up to a computer.

The movie is based on a book by William Gibson, and as a result is cyberpunk as all fuck, while it being made in the 90's accounts for it having that gritty 90's aesthetic you'd find in Hackers, Blade, Dark City or Existenz. A little known history of this movie is it was supposed to be way sicker than it ended up, originally being planned as an indie arthouse flick, which was inflated budget-wise by 30 times the original amount because Sony was sure it would be a big hit. The first-time director couldn't obviously get final cut, and was forced to bend over for studio executives who took turns raping the concept until it manifested as the finished product which went on to earn 14% from RT.

TL;DR - 8/10.

All problems aside, I love this fucking film. I'm a huge fan of movies with the 90's cyberpunk sensibility populated by characters they picked out of a Skinny Puppy concert. Has it aged poorly? Yep. Is it cheesy? Oh fuck yeah. But the storyline is great, the characters are interesting, and the overall atmosphere of the movie wraps you up in it's grimy film and when it's all over you'll want to drop an x and hit up a rave so you can dance all night to some prodigy.