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Johnny Mnemonic
(1995)
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Loosely based on a story by cyber-pioneer William Gibson, this futuristic thriller centres on a the title character played by Keanu Reeves, a courier who uploads vital data straight into his hard-drive of a brain for storage and safe transport. Johnny has given up brainspace that his childhood memories occupied in order to save space for his chosen profession. He wants to pull one last job before he retires, and the one he gets is particularly perilous. He's got 48 hours to transport a large load of data from Beijing to the United States--and some futuristic samurai don't want him to make it to his destination! The directorial debut of conceptual artist Robert Longo is full of arresting visuals painting a bleak, yet eye-popping, vision of the future. |
Director Robert Longo's turgid sci-fi thriller, based on William Gibson's cyberpunk short story, is cyber junk. Keanu Reeves sleepwalks through the title role as a 21st-century hi-tech messenger who carries top-secret information thanks to a computer chip in his brain allied to bio-enhanced memory cells. Unfortunately, his latest employers have overloaded his cranial capacity to such an extent that his head will explode unless he downloads fast. Empty, flashy and incredibly dull, Longo's unpleasant movie fails to generate any suspense and, worse still, is lamely tarted up with incomprehensible surf-cowboy jargon, gratuitous violence and second-rate special effects.
