Keanu Reeves seems like a really likeable, cool, fun person in real life who puts a lot of effort into his work and cares a lot about his fanbase, so it’s a shame that until recently with the success of John Wick, most of his movies don’t portray him as a very good actor. Whether it’s his stilted delivery, blank expressions or the fact that he’s constantly shafted with characters that have zero personality, it felt like a giant case of miscasting with many of his most infamously awful roles from movies like Dangerous Liaisons, Bram Stokers’ Dracula, and the one of discussion today, the 1995 cyberpunk film, Johnny Mnemonic. This is ironic as Reeves has become a bit of a legend in the cyberpunk genre after the success of the 1999 sci-fi sensation, The Matrix, as well as the popular 2020 sandbox action game, Cyberpunk 2077, but it seems his initial jump in wasn’t as beloved.

Set within the distant future of 2021 (ironically less paranoid-filled than the one the real world went through), society is run by a virtual internet and this new society has led to the creation of ‘mnemonic couriers’, people that transport secretive data through a storage unit implanted in their heads. One such courier is Johnny (played by Keanu Reeves) who has just recently received a large portion of data that he took in order to pay for an operation that would remove storage device but turns out this data is wanted by the Yakuza led by a man named Shinji (played by Denis Akiyama). Now on the run and carrying a sum of data that is causing his brain to suffer severe outbursts that show brief visions of something suppressed within his mind, Johnny  teams up with a cyber-enhanced bodyguard named Jane (played by Dina Meyer) and learns that the data holds the cure for nerve attenuation syndrome (or NAS), a degenerative illness that attacks people who spend too much time in the virtual internet. With this information, Johnny and Jane try to reach a safe haven in order to decide what to do with this information while being tracked by the Yakuza, an evil corporation run by a man named Takahashi (played by Takeshi Kitano) and a crazed assassin known as ‘’The Street Preacher’’ (played by Dolph Lundgren).

While most futuristic science fiction stories with a cyber-punk edge have had a strained relationship with their audience on release only to eventually gain a cult following later, Johnny Mnemonic didn’t receive the same treatment and is still viewed as a terrible flick. Though undoubtedly liked by some, this movie was critically destroyed upon release, couldn’t turn a profit even with a $26 million budget, and despite a limited-edition black-and-white version getting released in 2022, has failed to create a legacy for itself, which given its multitude of flaws, isn’t surprising.

For a movie that came out in 1995, it’s bizarre that it feels weirdly out of touch and ages behind other similar sci-fi stories, as everything regarding the world, characters, technology and even themes, don’t feel very new, striking, or distinct. There are chunks of ideas that sound decent enough, like a virtual internet that people physically search through in VR, and a literal virus spread through internet overuse has an element of a twisted irony to it (as well as a decent pun), but the world-building is so poor that what should be the plot’s driving force (this NAS virus) barely feels like it impacts this very jumbled narrative. While cyberpunk as a genre was still relatively fresh in the eyes of movie-goers at the time, stories of this calibre were frequent enough that it was clear how lacking in creativity and originality this plot was, and what’s even more confusing is that this idea originated from a short story written in 1981 by William Gibson, who essentially pioneered cyberpunk through several of his stories that tackled themes and ides that would become stables for the genre in the future (with his most famous being his debut novel, Neuromancer, in 1984).

The most likely reason for why this doesn’t feel on par with the rest of his work is because of the drastic changes made to the original source when it was adapted, as the multiple plot deviations, added on characters and forced in sub plots greatly change how the story flows. Like any adaptation, it’s understandable that things need to be adjusted in order to fit everything into a feature length running time, but it ironically feels like the plot has been increased substantially and yet nothing was added to make it feel more interesting. It feels more like a basic 90s action flick of the era as opposed to a dystopian cautionary tale about technology, which causes a lot of tonal whiplash as well as diminishes the short story. The script (also written by Gibson) oddly doesn’t feel too unnatural or like book dialogue (which can occur with most book-to-film adaptations), but the amount of exposition prevents any genuineness, and even from a basic filmmaking level, this film is horribly directed, written, and edited. Being the first and so far only movie directed by Robert Longo, it takes a straightforward but (with the right handling) manageable story, and makes it feel overly complicated, confused on what it should and shouldn’t focus on, and provides very little outside of a pedestrian portrayal of its original source, which had some intriguing core elements to focus on.

Getting someone like Keanu Reeves to star in this film, which was originally supposed to be a small budgeted art-house feature until the influx of cyberpunk’s relevancy convinced Sony to fund the project, was pretty impressive as he quickly became a much more recognizable and profitable star after the success of the 1994 film, Speed. Even with that newly adopted star power, it sadly doesn’t cover up how abysmal his acting is in this, with all of his familiarly negative attributes being front and centre to the point that it’s almost laughable to witness (even though it isn’t entirely his fault as the shoddy filmmaking certainly made things more difficult). Johnny Mnemonic as a character also has nothing to work with even as a standard stoic cyberpunk lead, being a literal shell of personality with no humanity or even backstory of any fashion, so it feels like Reeves really had no chance of surviving this with dignity. To be completely fair on Reeves, everybody’s acting in this movie is equally as wooden, flat, and awkward, so at least it’s a shared failure.

A lot of the side characters feel like generic archetypes of most action films of the time, with each one exhibiting some random touch of crazy insanity that would normally add some life and fun to the picture, but without proper handling and reasoning, just feels out-of-place, annoying, and useless. Some of the actors don’t even feel like they needed to be in this story, which is kind of true as some cast members were chosen in order mainly to appeal to certain demographics outside of the US (like Lundgren and Kitano). Even if this strategy kind of worked as the film did perform well in Asia, these two in particular make for incredibly weak antagonists, as neither character has much personality or motivation, and their awkward acting only makes things worse. The only person to somewhat survive this massacre is Dina Meyer as Jane, as she at least sounds like a normal person when she says her lines, but even she can’t escape how terribly her character is handled. She was actually called Molly in the original story and was a pretty major character who carried over into Gibson’s other work, but changes were made because her film rights were already sold, so she couldn’t be included. Considering Molly sounded pretty cool in the book, it’s even more painful knowing that an actual cool leading protagonist was lost due to rights issues and a literal sloppy second was chosen instead, it’s just another bruise on this already beaten-down movie.

For a story and a sub-genre centred around futuristic technology and dystopic landscapes, most properties in said sub-genre go out of their way to make their worlds feel distinctive, captivating and lived in so that the audience could experience a fantastical yet slightly plausible reality they’d like to live in. But much like the rest of the film however, the environment and production design by Nilo Rodis-Jamero is so generic and so poorly set up that the audience will instantly forget it the moment the credits start rolling. Every location looks repetitive of other sci-fi stories, most of tech doesn’t feel that special from a visual or even usage standpoint, even a majority of the rebellious factions look like every other rebellion group from any other story. As previous stated, there are pieces and fun components to this world that could allow it to stand out, but when the locations don’t feel that different to modern day reality, it not only paints the world as boring, but also inconsistent, especially with how many times it jumps between being realistic and unrealistic.

It has an 80/90s action movie aesthetic to its characters, style, visuals, and music, but some of these ideas and the more colourless look would work better in a more grounded atmosphere, so it’s in constant conflict with itself (although when the final McGuffin is revealed to be a super smart dolphin, it’s pretty hard to see it as anything but over-the-top). Probably the reason the movie looks so bland is that it’s shot in a very boring way, with none of the cinematography by François Protat allowing for moments where the sets can be shown off in a clear light, which makes everything look smoky, destitute and not very memorable. Even some of technology looks pretty outdated whenever it’s used, but thankfully this is one of the few components that the film does showcase in a visual interesting way. Actively searching through the internet in a VR-like perspective is honestly pretty cool and the dated graphics actually help make it look a little bit more compelling than if it looked realistic.

There are tons of cyberpunk movies that have improved in the eyes of many, but Johnny Mnemonic is not going to be one of those movies because nothing about it is worth remembering. Even if it came out when the sub-genre was only ten years old, it still doesn’t feel like it reached for greater heights as it was less impressive and impactful than the short story it came from. Considering Keanu’s role in Cyberpunk 2077 almost felt like an apology and redemption for his part in this film (the character’s name is Johnny Silverhand, that can’t be a coincidence), it’s nice that he got a second chance, and proved that even with his ‘specific’ acting style, he can make it work with good material. While the short story looks like it has some worthwhile elements, this movie feels like a shilled-out property that’s more studio-controlled than creative, which is probably true as Longo did say that the studio interfere and dumbed down a lot of elements that made the movie more artsy, random and fun, and while it’s hard to say that the original cut would’ve been great, it sounds a lot more interesting than what was provided. Little to digitally gloss over with this corrupted hard drive, this movie should’ve been left in the trash tab.

Tags: , , , , , , , , ,