One plus of the linear-tv age of the past is that I’ve seen movies I would have no chance otherwise. Polish stations tried to put as many new blockbusters as possible. Other times they had to resort to movies of lesser fame, like the hero of the day - Johnny Mnemonic.
Willian Gibson, the father of modern Cyberpunk genre, doesn’t have much luck when it comes to movies. Neuromancer is finally getting an adaptation, but unfortunately it will be a TV show1. His Aliens III script was rejected. At this moment, his only legacy in this medium is Johnny Mnemonic. Luckily, it’s an awesome legacy!
The story is what he does best - a classic story in a cybernetic world. Johnny is a courier who smuggles information. The trick is that he is not smuggling them on tapes, but in his own brain. This time he overdid it and loaded too much data (320 gigs!) overflowing his capacity. He needs to get it out, and to do it fast. It won’t be easy as the data is hot and yakuza and gigantic corporation are trying to stop him.
Neuromancer is a heist story with a twist, Johnny Mnemonic is a fugitive story with a twist. For what it’s worth, I found the story to be great. There is nothing profound, nothing makes you scratch your head. It’s story about a smuggler and the whole world trying to kill him.
The worst aspect of this movie is the acting. It’s Keanu Reeves at his most mediocre, single faced act. Even Takashi Kitano seems to be bored on set. I have no idea why, but no actor seems to be invested.
But everything else works. First, the movie looks great. All special effects are selling distopian vision of near future - be it the scenes of high raise buildings, slums, or of cyberspace. It all looks like one would expect (no sky the color of TV turned to a dead channel though, which is a shame).
Talking about cyberspace, when have we ruined the way we talked about computers? Johnny… has all the Gibson’s words, like Ice-breakers. It’s magical and hypnotic. We live in world of his novels (with corporations being more powerful than nations, internet everywhere, or the destruction of environment) but this is what we lost? It’s so dull and dry! I don’t want App, I want “visual interface”.
I may be looking at this movie through rose-tainted cyber-visors, but I was expecting a terrible movie. I saw as a teen and loved it. But somehow, after all this years Johnny Mnemonic holds up. It’s not a big nor overly smart movie. It’s a product of it’s times but does it marvelously. I loved it.
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It’s a sign of the times. Platforms want to get as much from every license, a Neuromancer is as hot as SciFi goes. This means that it will most likely be expanded into self-parody, with one unnecessary thread after another. And Neuromaner is already structured as a movie! ↩︎