Johnny Mnemonic

Set in the future, a courier has uploaded some data into a “hard drive” that resides in his head, and must now escape the bad guys who are after that very important information. Since he overloaded his “hard drive”, he’s also racing against the clock before the information seeps into his brain and kills him.

Incoherent, boring, one-act drivel with no suspense, horribly unbelievable futuristic environment, bad dialogue, career-defining bad acting by Keanu Reeves and a hilarious ending. It’s too bad because the premise of the film was interesting, but unfortunately for my friends and I, this movie turned out to be just as bad as everyone had warned us. It’s one of those films that makes you start laughing half-way through, when you realize that most of the actors in it suck, the location shots are filmed in dark “junkyard” type areas which they would like to have us believe to be futuristic (whatever…), and all the sets look like….well, sets. There is also absolutely no arc to this story. It basically starts off with Keanu uploading info into his brain, and then a bunch of folks chasing him from place to place until a laughable ending puts a stop to the former uneventful proceedings. Gibson should stick to writing novels and “X-Files” episodes, since his segue into the paranormal TV series was much more entertaining than any of this garbage.

Some other hilarities of this film include Dolph Lundgren as some futuristic Jesus character whose supposed to kick ass, Henry Rollins as a pumped-up cyber-doctor or something, and Ice-T as some kind of a hobo dude with paint all over his face (Don’t ask). The ending is the funniest with some robot dolphin and a stupid ghost-lady from inside the computer doing some stuff that no one really cares about by that point. I’m ashamed to say this film was shot in my hometown of Montreal, Canada, but sadly enough for us all, it was. Some of the cyber-travelling special effects were okay (Hence, the 2/10), but overall, it’s one of those bad movies that’s just funny to watch and cringe at. Thankfully for Keanu, he redeemed his sci-fi career with 1999’s THE MATRIX (8/10). It’s too bad that he has yet to redeem his lack of acting talent.

(c) 2021 Berge Garabedian