Johnny (Keanu Reeves) is a mnemonic smuggler, with an illegal implant in his brain that allows him to store computer data. On his last job, things go terribly wrong and he finds himself hunted by the Yakuza. Worse, he only has twenty-four hours to remove the overload of information from his head before it kills him. His only help comes from Jane (Dina Meyer), a mercenary bodyguard with a debilitating disease, and from the “low-tech underground,” led by J-Bone (Ice-T).
Johnny Mnemonic is the most Cyberpunk of all Cyberpunk movies. Walking through my own definition:
- It is based on a short story by the father of Cyberpunk, William Gibson, who also wrote the screenplay.
- Johnny is a self-centered, emotionally troubled smuggler chased by the Yakuza.
- The world is filled with violent mercenaries, psychopathic hit men, profiteering middlemen, and greedy, sociopathic, corporate executives.
- The date is 2021 and corporations in concert with organized crime control society. If you’re not part of that elite world, you live in poverty on the streets.
- Computers are everywhere and some, like Johnny, can jack-in. Cybernetic body parts are the norm.
- Tech-oriented slang is common, particularly among the “low-tech” street people.
- Life is filled with betrayal and defeat.
For all the fancy trimmings, the story is an old one and quite simple at its heart. The protagonist has a thing he must deliver in a set timeframe or he’ll die. Bad guys try to stop him and get the thing. Add in a sidekick and a bit of romance (in the same person), and this film’s been made many times. It’s not a bad story, but don’t let the environment fool you into thinking there’s more here than there is.
But this film isn’t about story; it’s about mood and background. Johnny Mnemonic creates a rich and strangely humorous world. The point is we’re getting too much information in our daily lives and Gibson paints what that internal overload feels like in an external landscape. Everything is loud, hectic, disorganized, and just past our comprehension. Things pop in and disappear again with little explanation or motivation. In our fast-paced world, there’s no time to understand the details. As such, Johnny Mnemonic is a cousin of Alice in Wonderland, with wacky characters doing what they do for reasons that are beyond us.
How well the film plays depends a lot on how interesting the background is and how amusing the characters are. Luckily, most of the sideshow freaks are a good time. Udo Kier (Blade, Flesh for Frankenstein, Blood for Dracula) has made a living playing androgynous reprobates and as Johnny’s traitorous agent, he’s just over-the-top enough. His transsexual bodyguards are a notch more bizarre, but the winner in pure excess is Dolph Lundgren as the cybernetic Street Preacher assassin. While Kier purrs his lines, Lundgren gleefully proclaims them to the heavens. Henry Rollins uses his punk rock finesse as Spider, a “flesh-mechanic” doctor who is incapable of asking for someone to pass the bread without sarcasm. Add in Denis Akiyama as a Yakuza killer with a monofilament laser weapon in his thumb, and you’ve got yourself more than enough eccentric psychos for an hour and a half.
Takeshi Kitano, as the mastermind of the villains, is not as entertaining as his colleagues, but he works as atmosphere. Apparently, he was cast to satisfy Japanese audiences. The only complete failure is J-Bone, portrayed with one expression and one vocal tone by Ice-T. He never feels like he belongs in this world, and he isn’t funny. He’s drab. It’s too bad as he gets much of the techno-babble that defines Cyberpunk.
Johnny and Jane are our Alice for the trip through the looking glass, and they aren’t exactly normal. Jane is a low self-esteem bodyguard with a huge chip on her shoulder, implants to make her lethal, and a disease. Johnny is a brat who no longer remembers his childhood as he needed that brain space for data storage. In one of the best scenes, Johnny throws a tantrum, screaming out “I want room service…I want a $10,000 a night hooker. I want my shirts laundered like they do at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.” Don’t we all. Even with their flaws, they are our guides simply because they are the only ones who make sense. Dina Meyers is completely believable, with pain washing across her face when she isn’t angry or lost. As for Reeves, the part fits him perfectly. I have a theory that he is a master thespian in any genre film (using the term broadly) where there is something wrong with his brain or soul (Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, I Love You to Death, The Devil’s Advocate, The Matrix) while he reaches new heights of incompetence in any genre film where he’s supposed to be a normal human (Chain Reaction, Speed, Much Ado About Nothing, Dracula). Luckily, Johnny is a stunted human missing a chunk of his mind so Reeves is in great shape.
While Johnny Mnemonic is a film meant to inundate the viewer with the sights and the sounds and the people of an overwhelming universe, it wouldn’t have hurt that goal to spend some effort on the narrative. The climatic battle is far from satisfying.
I’m in the minority in giving a good grade to Johnny Mnemonic. The poor film couldn’t win. Fans of Gibson were upset that it didn’t adhere closer to his short story’s vision. Everyone else was unhappy that it was too Cyberpunk, wanting normal characters instead of representations and getting lost in the slang. The Matrix has changed the vocabulary and if it were released now, Johnny Mnemonic would be mainstream. What a difference a few years make.