Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

5/10

Starring

Keanu Reeves

Dolph Lundgren

Takeshi Kitano

Ice-T

Dina Meyer

Directed by Robert Longo

As far as the movie goes it is not spectacular and I wonder if William Gibson the screenplay writer would have felt he should have stuck true to the story.

Based on a short-story of the same name by the screenplay writer himself in 1981, the film is not close to the source material to which it is adapted from. Other than taking with it, the story structure and the world to which the story lives, other things are added to flesh out the world of the movie.

In this new world Johnny is like an anti-hero and the other characters in the movie added to what made this movie look and feel like an overbudget B-movie.

This cyberpunk action thriller stars Keanu Reeves as Johnny and it was the last theatrical released movie of Dolph Lundgren before The Expendables (2010).

The story structure of the book and movie has Johnny as a data trafficker who has undergone some kind of cybernetic surgery to have a data storage system implanted in his head. This allows him to store digital information which are too sensitive to be transmitted online.

Johnny has no idea what the data is and the data itself is password locked. The password is known only to the intended recipient.

At this point the movie then deviates into the making of an anti-hero. While Johnny in the book settled to survive by being a blackmailer here in the movie, they introduced a disease called NAS. NAS is short for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome which is something added to the movie, something Johnny seems to be able to solve. The how is something you will get from watching the movie.

While other people are looking for Johnny time is running out on Johnny himself. So, either he survives from the people looking to kill him or he finds a way to get the data off his head or be killed because of its presence.

This try to save the world addition to the movie plot made the movie take a no needed turn for us to know more about Johnny. His personal struggles, and see him contemplate being good and stop thinking of himself, something the short-story did not have to bother much about. The movie

Johnny Mnemonic is a popular movie for those who were born earlier, but even seeing it now I still understand why I did not like it much back then. The short story it is based on does not have like ninety percent of the characters that are in the movie, so if you get to read the short story, do not be alarmed.