In spite of the fact that this movie tends to show up in the lists of key science fiction movies of all times (interestingly enough, it is not the case of Wired's Sci-Fi Top 20), I never had very high expectations about it. Well, rightly so. While I would not call it plain bad, there is little doubt in my mind that this take on William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic short story of the same name does not deserve very high points. It views like the typical low-budget B-series sci-fi flick: chases, lots of action, shootings, lack of morals, murders, dystopian view of an urban future dominated by large metropolises and megacorporations, unintelligible geeky terms... it has it all, but all that would be fully expected in a movie like this.

The core idea behind the story (Keanu Reeves plays the role of a data courier who carries information inside his head due to an implant that was installed by replacing his childhood memories) is actually quite intriguing, but it is never fully developed during the movie. Unfortunately, it is not the only interesting idea that is not developed at all. We hear from the main character some comments that make us believe he suffers from having lost all those childhood memories, but end up having no idea exactly what type of suffering that experience may cause. We are told of a dangerous virus spreading throughout the world (the Neural Attenuation Syndrome or NAS), and are also told that it is a direct consequence of an overexposure to technology and information overload, but never quite understand its origins, its symptoms, its consequences. The world depicted in this movie is controlled by large corporations that compete against each other without much care for any sort of governmental regulation (as a matter of fact, they do not think twice before resorting to the Japanese mafia or Yakuza to solve their problems), but we are never quite told how this came to happen or where the Governments and their legislation went. In other words, we are left with a half-drawn world, a mere bunch of suggestive ideas that are never taken any further. It is all too fragmented, too unconnected. Lots of different ideas are dropped on us without further clarification, without explanation, without any apparent purpose other than to shock us. In the end, Johnny Mnemonic views like the typical chasing movie so daring to Hollywood these days. Pity.

As an aside, the few technical details mentioned in the movie result very quaint, especially the reference to mainframes or the difficulties that Johnny experiences to upload a mere 320 GBs of information into his memory implant. Perhaps they should have also come up with some made-up geeky term for that. At the very least it would have not fallen outdated so soon.

Entertaiment factor:4/10
Artistic factor:4/10