Johnny Mnemonic (1995)'s comments

Do you want to let us know what you think? Just login, after which you will be redirected back here and you can leave your comments.

adastras

great movie, very cyberpunk

13 years 1 month ago

90's cyberpunk with a forgettable plot and a quirky performance by Reeves. In '95 the internet was still something almost mystical and so the plot takes advantage of that with its virtual reality scenes and otherworldly visuals. Could've explored its own concepts a lot better and in more detail.

2 years ago

Rubenvd

No matter how hard I try, I can't imagine a movie being more nineties than this.

3 years 4 months ago

Siskoid

As the purest examples of cyberpunk put to screen, I really want Johnny Mnemonic to be better, but no, I can't even watch it with nostalgia glasses on. I guess one of the problems with cyberpunk is that it's immediately dated - computer culture has grown in ways that were not exactly expected, never mind the hardware - but calling it a retro-future 2021 is more than ok. Like Blade Runner, it has inklings of film noir, but only inklings. A classic car here, a costume there, but it doesn't really stick to any aesthetic. Or if it does, it's the dystopian trope of making stuff out of garbage, which just makes the movie look cheap. As an action movie, it's ropy as hell. The actors look so uncomfortable with guns in their hands, it looks like they're kids play-acting, and the physical fights are done with fast cuts, or they're not and look terrible. Dina Meyer is probably the least convincing, especially once she randomly abandons her costume to look like the girl next door. Dolph Lundgren's character comes close to greatness as a sort of cyber-priest assassin, but he's no better served by the haphazard direction and lamentable script. Really, much of my boredom comes from the lackluster dialog, but none of the actors except Lundgren seem interested in delivering it, least of all Keanu. And then there are the 90s computer graphics. While I'm normally very forgiving of this kind of thing - we have to put technique in the context of its time - the voyages through the Internet are just ugly and messy. It makes the climax irritating and hard to understand, so it's a failure on that count as well. Sorry Johnny, but I need to dump this particular memory packet.

4 years 8 months ago