The year is 2021, and half of the Earth's population is suffering from the disease known as Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS). Johnny, a mnemonic data courier, is hired to carry 320 gigabytes of crucial information to safety from the Pharmacom corporation. Pursued by Yakuza agents and a crazed cyborg, Johnny must deliver the data or die in twenty-four hours. A data courier, literally carrying a data package inside his head, must deliver it before he dies from the burden or is killed by the Yakuza. I always like to think of cyberpunk as film noir with less likable characters, technological knobs on, and the occasional aspiration towards social commentary. However, like most things with strong and frequently recurring character types (read: clichés but to be fair, which movie doesn't have those?), these things only succeed well with a mainstream audience if given the right treatment.<br/><br/>Sadly this movie never rises above a b-movie sensibility - a fact not necessarily due to the size of the production budget. In fact, the budget-wise this film is more in the ball-park of The Terminator than that of The Matrix (of which the latter seems a lazy but still-too-obvious comparison for some to resist). But of course, rising above financial constraints to create a watershed or at least standout moment in cinema usually requires either a more experienced director or an individual possessed of unique vision and the ability to translate it well to screen - both of which fail to appear under the helmage of Robert Longo (for whatever reasons).<br/><br/>I'd also like to hope that William Gibson's status as founding father of cyberpunk hasn't deluded him into thinking he can stop writing characters and instead insert genre clichés in the hopes that no one notices - but his script doesn't give me much hope. A slick way of writing is one thing, and indeed, great for books, but on screen it helps to give your characters more depth than a puddle, and something more audience-relatable rather than just being bipedal.. <br/><br/>Outside of Johnny (a half blank individual by necessity-of-plot) and Jane (your typical down-on-her-luck/sympathetic heroine who crosses paths with the main anti-hero), very little is given to the supporting characters to work with. Udo Kier's Ralfi oozes the kind of hairsbreadth recourse to treachery so obvious you don't have to wonder too hard why he could only make a living peddling individuals with half their brains missing; Henry Rollins' Spider is irate about the rampant technology increasingly glutting humanity's veins (in the film's case, literally) and yet is still very much dependent on it, and indeed proud of the 'work' it allows him to produce - to the extent that it seems hypocritical at best, laughable at worst; Ice-T's J-Bone just seems bored with it all as the leader of 'Heaven' a group of 'lo-tech' outsiders who keep themselves vaguely entertained by messing with the larger population's satellite-feed - although you might be inclined to feel bored along with him if his followers are the loyal but half-witted twits the movie makes them appear to be; and Takeshi Kitano's Takahashi just isn't given much outside of being a grieving Yakuza who wouldn't recognize his own emotions if they shook hands and introduced themselves. In fact, most of the characters introduced seem to be outmoded and largely upstaged by their own technological enhancements. Indeed, if this was a theme the movie was shooting for, I'd have to say it does an impressive job representing it. <br/><br/>All this said, if you don't mind being irreverent about it, the film's by no means an entire waste of time.<br/><br/>Keanu Reeves does represent Johnny's dedication to sensual pleasure and consumer trappings in the absence of actual personality, and memory, though in characteristic fashion, he plays Johnny as an exercise in subtraction, making him seem somewhat more subdued than might be suitable for this kind of movie (poor action pictures tend to demand, if not necessitate a certain degree of scenery chewing). That said, he does, thankfully, increase Johnny's intensity as time goes on post-upload so that you do get the sense of a guy with a headache that can only increase exponentially before killing him entirely - which, by the way, culminates in said character's delightful hissy fit atop of a backwater garbage heap.<br/><br/>In fact, J-Bone's amusement at Johnny's brattish incredulity when he finally meets Jones is probably the most emotion that character shows for the entire film.<br/><br/>Dina Meyers makes Jane sympathetic enough to somewhat suspend any wonderings as to why or how she got the way she did - by choice, freak accident, or desperation? That said, the tone of the entire film makes you less and less inclined to care but I will say she evinced as much emotion as could feasibly called upon her character to have.<br/><br/>So finally, I'll say that while I generally like being dropped into a character's world, and observing what occurs there, without a relatable cast or character to navigate said world any film - but especially this one - would require at least one or two of the following to tide over an audience with no prior genre investment:<br/><br/>1. Witty dialogue; 2. A consistent aesthetic, i.e. a distinctive and pleasing visual style - as it was the environments required were poorly rendered into a kind of non-descript collage of grand hotel interiors, and scrap-metal urbanism; 3. Sustained tone, i.e. the audience should at least feel something more than bored with the world they're viewing; 4. A sufficiently interesting subplot or - in absence of that - subtext.<br/><br/>I honestly can't say Johnny Mnemonic carries any of the above in consistent manner. There are moments of humour to be sure, but one ends up feeling these aren't entirely the moments of amusement intended by those involved.<br/><br/>As it is, the film feels like nothing more than an over-elaborate advert for the author's work. I haven't read William Gibsons version of the story, but I doubt that it is as bad as the movie. Well - if you think about the way the directors approached the creation of this film it will become quite obvious why the story itself is so inconsequent, overdrawn and stereotype-packed. There were several attempts of making this movie, originally being envisioned as a black and white art-film with a critical portrayal of a new cyberpunk generation. Each times financing changed the project got more and more mainstreamed, until it developed into… well, what came out eventually. The directors were just glad about having finished the movie at all. I mean, Keanu Reeves straight-forward and uninventive acting isn't really fitting into this picture, Dolph Lundgren is just… Dolph Lundgren (not to speak about his role, the killing priest, which I consider a joke, in the movie) and it's just obvious that the separate parts of the plot are just clumsily enhanced elements of Gibsons original draft in order to fit the 90 minutes cinema format. Though there are things that aren't too bad about that movie - namely some parts convincingly conveying the feel of cyberpunk and the performances of Takeshi and Ice-T. Overall the picture isn't all garbage - it's a good concept unfortunately badly realized.
Jaediinriq replied
292 weeks ago