Johnny Mnemonic (1995) - This Week in Film Podcast

Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
Featured in: Week 37
Discussed by: Nick

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Nick’s Week 37 Johnny Mnemonic Notes (I’m not fixing any of these typos, you’re welcome):

• 4 years after point break and 4 years before the matrix

• this week I watched Keanu reeves in the 1995 train wreck johnny mnemonic

*This is laughably bad. You have to watch it. It stars Keanu, ice-t, dolph Lund green, Dina Meyer, and of course Henry Rollins is in it playing a doctor. He wears glasses so you can see how smart he is.

*Also the year is 2021. It’s a dystopian future where society has been ruin by the Internet and television.

*Keanu plays a smuggler who has a implant in his brain which allows him to upload classified or confidential information for companies or criminals want to move around. Who ever pays, he works for.

*In order to get this implant they had to remove Keanu’s long term memories, so he doesn’t know who he is. But that doesn’t matter because it hardly comes up except when he’s bored.

*So the movie starts, Keanu gets forced into one last ride but this time there’s trouble. Normally his brain can only hold 180gb of data, but the client needs to move over 300gb.

*Not a problem! Keanu fits it all in his brain, which has to be the funniest looking thing. Afterward he goes to the bathroom to have a seizure, then there’s a gun fight and you realize there’s a whole lot more going on.

• the yakuza who are or are working for a drug company, who created this tech disease called the black shakes want Keanu’s head because he has the cure in it.

*Keanu puts on an amazing disguise of wig and glasses and walks like a robot out of the building and heads to New Jersey, which is a giant dump. Not much has changed in the movie. Jersey slam.

*Because Keanu’s head is overloaded he has about 24 hours to get the data out or his brain will break down or something stupid. So they keep reminding you by having him have a seizure whenever it’s convenient and he needs to take a nap.

*Anyway, Keanu gets double crossed and fights his way out of a bad time. Then he makes friends with ice t. Ice t is the leader of the poor people. They live in what’s left of a bridge because New Jersey is a terrible place and in the future.

*ice t leaves and the Keanu gets captured by the yakuza and then gets rescued by Dina Meyer who plays dizzy in star ship troopers. But let’s just call her felicity because that’s who I thought it was for most of the movie.

*Felicity saves Keanu and she takes him to meet dr Henry Rollins.

*Meanwhile the yakuza are getting pretty mad about this whole thing. So they hire dolph Lundgreen who plays a long hair religious nut named Street preacher, he’s going to hunt down Keanu. Everyone he comes across he kills in some jesusy kind of way.

*The movie goes on for a while and eventually Keanu and felicity meet up with ice t. Ice t says “we can help you, let’s go meet Jones, who is ex military computer hacker”

*Jones is a dolphin. *He’s a dolphin connected to a computer. It’s horrifying. It has red eyes and blast concentrated sonar at people who piss it off.

*Anyway, for whatever reason, the dolphin helps and he and Keanu go into the worst looking CGi internet world in order to hack into Keanu’s mind.

*Then the movie ends. *It was great. I can’t wait to watch it again.

*The movie was directed by Robert Longo who never made another film but I guess he’s a celebrated 1980s artist. According to Wikipedia a bunch of his art is on the walls of Patrick bateman’s apartment in American psycho.

*The movie is very disjointed. Felt like the beginning and end of most scenes were just removed.

*Finally, Keanu’s character is called johnny. But not johnny mnemonic just johnny or johnny smith.

*It was really dumb. I loved it.