JOHNNY MNEMONIC
[Spoilers]
A film review by Allan Toombs
Copyright 1996 Allan Toombs
A Real No Brainer (Some Spoilers) A Film Review by Allan Toombs Copyright 1996 Allan Toombs
The first thing that JOHNNY MNEMONIC did was make me laugh, after that it was all downhill. The cause of my laughter was a TRON style image of moving light pathways upon which came the title 'THE INTERNET' and then '- 2021'. This kind of glib acceptance of current gee-whizz predictions for the future typifies the film's crude approach to the SF genre.
Johnny Mnemonic began in 1981 as a short story in OMNI by William Gibson. Over the next few years the kind of bleak near-future vision embodied by the story would gain itself the label 'Cyberpunk' to distance it the more optimistic mainstream of science fiction. This tag soon grew to encompass films like BLADERUNNER which seemed to share the same stark stylism. Today the term has broadened to become a set of alt. newsgroups with horrific noise to signal problems and an album by Billy Idol, yet the hyper-realistic vision posited by that original SF clique continues to exert a powerful influence.
It must have seemed a natural winner to adapt Gibson's simple tale of stakeouts into a big budget movie. Bill himself got to do the screenplay yet somewhere along the way his intensely cerebral brand of SF excitement got lost in the morass of action/adventure. Attention to detail is a crucial part of cyberpunk's effect; 'Fragments Of A Hologram Rose' is another Gibson short with this close-up view at the heart of it's narrative and it's title. Similarly Ridley Scott's film drew our attention to a single snake scale or the reflection in a mirror enhanced and amplified. Yet director Robert Longo fails to bring any style to the cinematography. The direction is neither poetic and lingering nor ram-raidingly crude like the MAD MAX series; just bog-standard direction. Even the soundtrack was neither a stirring classical score nor a moody synthesiser back-drop but somewhere inbetween.
The Japanese actors in this piece were impeccable, displaying well-starched malice and the absolute possesion of the Yakuza. Even the much maligned Ice-T gave one of the best performances in this movie. Whereas Keanau Reeves was awful, looking far too much like Harrison Ford and delivering lines like someone doing a bad Scwarzenegger impression. Right from the opening scene where is sun-bronzed physique was dwelt upon he seems wrong as the technophile who has a chip in his head. He is meant to be fragile, head over full with precious data, yet he slugs into every fight there is. Towards the end he makes a speech straight out of GRAND CANYON and sounds like a spoilt child throwing a tantrum. Gibson's words (if they are his work) are memorable "I want starched shirts like they have at the Tokyo Hilton" but Reeves makes them risable.
William Gibson's novels always have a strong woman at the heart of the action. In the original short story we have Molly Millions, ultra-cool in mirrorshades that are her augmented eyes and razor sharp blades the retract into her polished nails. Last year's excellent VIRTUAL LIGHT had the quick-witted cycle courier Chevette Washington. Dina Meyer is woefully miscast in this role and drifts through the movie like an extra from Baywatch. It must be hard keeping your hair blow-dried when you live on the street.
Dolph Lundgren portrays a psychopath well, but the character was surplus to requirements. It's as if Fox's bosses felt that there had to be a white bad guy in case Gibson's deeply multi-ethnic future confused audiences or over-use of the Yakuza offended Japanese corporate sensibilities. I would have prefered alot more of Takeshi who was intensely charismatic and conveyed loss and redemption very convincingly.
There are some virtuoso computer animated sequences in JOHNNY MNEMONIC bringing alive Gibson's vivid conception of Cyberspace (hey, the man coined the term) yet these seem disconnected from the plot. Beautiful yet pointless. Cyberspace has become nothing more than a fly-through MTV video. What we do see of the net's future is couched in lazy gee-whizzery. Our hero opens a world map, points to Beijing and then goes straight to the Hotel he wants. Where's the vaunted information overload?
Some moronic use was made of stock footage including a clip of an aircraft landing - it's a Concorde. Now where's the attention to detail? I thought everyone knew the Concorde fleet only has 20 years more life left in it (many of them are cannibalised already!) and that the successor project won't have a replacement for alot longer than that. By pitching JOHNNY MNEMONIC in 2021 it's ensured that the Concorde is out of place. Similarly there's a pitiful model shot of a communications satellite that is gratingly cheap sat next to the computer generated sequences.
Overall JOHNNY MNEMONIC shows how Hollywood can take a promisingly cinematic story, chew it up and spit it out without any soul. Evertything has to be literal and visual. At the end of the movie with the contraband data safely broadcast Reeves and Meyer kiss (happy ending ahoy!) and the wicked corporate building bursts into flames, "Somebody getting some early revenge" he explains. As if anyone can bomb a tower-block on a whim just to give us a James Bond style ending. This is a tragicly wasted opportunity to bring a unique science-fiction vision to the big screen and a reminder of what a mess Hollywood creates when it thinks it knows what the kids want.
Everyone want's to cut off Johnny's head but in the end it's the movie itself that runs around like a headless chicken.
Allan Toombs http://www.cityscape.co.uk/users/bt18/atoombs.html mailto:toombs@cityscape.co.uk
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