Bad Movies I Love, Part Four: Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Back In late 1994, Keanu Reeves was hot as hell after the success of bomb-on-a-bus action movie Speed. He was linked with everything from the then hot script Soldier and an adaptation of Tom Clancy’s Without Remorse. However his next movie would come out in summer 1995 and sink like a stone amongst such heavyweights as Batman Forever, Die Hard with a Vengeance and Crimson Tide. When the trailer debuted on the popular Big Breakfast programme one morning I was stunned. It seemed like Johnny Mnemonic would be a thrilling visual feast presenting images I had always dreamed of seeing on the big screen. I had just recently gotten into Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and this movie based on cyberpunk godfather William Gibson’s short story and adapted by the man himself seemed like the next logical step. It had a dark grimy looking future and tapped into the then funky virtual reality craze with its depiction of the internet, which was if you remember back in 1995 not in every home and only accessible at your college or school. I walked to school that morning buzzing.

The film was an almighty flop on its first weekend, reaching only number 6 in the box office top ten. Seen all round as something of a disappointment and a missed opportunity. The Keanu fans stayed away and so did the internet geeks who were to busy playing the actual Johnny Mnemonic CD Rom game no doubt. Between the time when I saw the trailer and the eventual UK release in February 1996, I started reading some of William Gibson’s work and was smitten with the corporation and technology ruled world he portrayed with its data hustlers and assassins. Despite the negative buzz I went along to the flicks one Saturday afternoon anyway, I was easily pleased at 17. I wish I could tell you that this movie gave me the same feeling I had when I first saw Blade Runner or The Matrix. I wish I could tell you the movie was exciting as hell. I wish we were talking now about a bona fide sci-fi classic. Sadly it was not to be.

The story takes place in the near future where corporations entrust their most sensitive information to Mnemonic couriers, agents who smuggle data in wet wired brain implants. Johnny eyeing one last job so he can have an operation to regain his childhood memories takes on too much data and his brain is in danger of imploding. Turns out the data is a potential world changing cure to NAS (Nerve Attenuation Syndrome) which is plaguing the human race. With the help of Jane, an assassin for hire Johnny has to go on the run from the Yakuza who are employed by pharmacom who developed the cure. Treating the disease is more profitable than curing it. The corporations are opposed by the lo-teks, data hackers who try and infiltrate the corrupt system. They turn out to be Johnny’s only hope.

The problems with Johnny Mnemonic are legion. The acting is bad, the pacing is all off key and apart from a neat sequence involving the Internet, the effects and matte work are all sub par. Debut director Robert Longo has a good eye for framing a sequence and there are a few decent images but sadly he has no idea on directing action or working with actors. Keanu is even more wooden here than in Dracula, he wouldn’t learn how to play a bastard effectively until Constantine ten years later. The stunt casting of Ice T, Henry Rollins and Dolph Lundgren in supporting roles do are effectively there as ‘ooh look he is from MTV’ performances and feel flat and hollow.

So why oh why you may be asking does he love it? Well despite it being a bad movie, and make no mistake this is a bad film, I can see the original intention and Gibson’s world beaming through the cracks. When released on home video in August of 1996 I found I couldn’t stop watching it. I loved getting lost in the cyberpunk future. Along with Blade Runner and Ghost in the Shell, Johnny Mnemonic got heavy rotation in the VHS player. Even more frustrating than the film’s inherent badness is the knowledge that possibly the best stuff ended up on the cutting room floor. Yes, there exists a longer cut of the film with an additional fifteen minutes. A lot of this involved Takeshi Kitano’s yakuza character and also the fact that ‘Jones’ the dolphin the lo-teks use to hack networks is also a heroin addict. At the time ,this stuff was cut to up the action quota and appeal to Keanu’s new found fanbase after Speed. Sadly without the character building and emotional investment needed in the story, all the cool production design in the world can’t save a movie if we don’t give a crap. The longer cut is to this day only available in Japan.

In the world of science fiction literature, William Gibson is up there with the likes of Frank Herbert, Phillip K.Dick, Isaac Asimov and Arthur C Clarke. Sadly despite the successful adaptations of their work, Gibson has only this and Abel Ferrara’s New Rose Hotel to his name as film credits. New Rose Hotel is still unreleased in the UK and talk of adaptations of Neuromancer and Pattern Recognition have all gone quiet despite the involvement of music video director Chris Cunningham and Witness director Peter Weir. Someday hopefully someone will make a kick ass adaptation of one of Gibson’s stories which will be a milestone in science fiction cinema. Until that day Johnny Mnemonic is the best representation of the authors work on screen.