JOHNNY MNEMONIC

STARRING: Keanu Reeves, Dolph Lundgren, Takeshi, Ice-T, Dina Meyer, Udo Kier, Denis Akiyama, Henry Rollins, Tracy Tweed, Don Francks

1995, 98 Minutes, Directed by: Robert Longo

Description: Adaptation of William Gibson's cyberpunk short story (available in his book Burning Chrome) for which Gibson himself wrote the screenplay. Valuable top-secret electronic data would be stored in the "wet-wired" brain of a human courier (played by Keanu Reeves), who then transports the data from China to New Jersey as part of his last, most dangerous assignment. — Amazon.com

Cyberpunk godfather William Gibson's work finally makes it to the big screen. Unfortunately it is too late and one wonders what would have happened had his Hugo award-winning Neuromancer been made into a movie shortly after its publication. The sad truth is that we have already had buzzwords such as virtual reality and cyberspace explained in (albeit lesser) films such as Lawnmower Man.

Thus Johnny Mnemonic lost much of the impact it could have had. The situation is made worse by the presence of a wooden Keanu Reaves, first time director's Robert Loggia's flat look to the movie and Gibson's screenplay that tends to over explain events and terms. Had Neuromancer explained anything it would have had none of the impact it had.

The character Johnny Mnemonic, a data courier (data is stored directly unto his brain) who literally suffers from an info overload, is a metaphor in Gibson's world of humanity in general. This becomes clear as the plot progresses: the information stored in his head contains the cure for a disease which is basically a product of our information overloaded times.