It's a mild crowd pleaser for people who are exhausted by blockbusters.

Blending excellent reporting and strong storytelling, this is a disturbing film truly stranger than fiction

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

First, let me make this clear: I'm giving this good marks as a fun, B movie, NOT as quality cinema.You have to remember that William Gibson wrote novels about technology while admittedly knowing absolutely nothing about technology himself, so yes, the movie starts with an absurd premise and runs with it, but parts are at least a fun ride. First and foremost, it's fun nostalgic to catalog the ubiquitous post-apocalyptic sci-fi tropes from the era: Rich people wear suits and live in high rises, while poor people dress in rags and wear face paint. People in between hang out in nightclubs and wear lots of makeup.Trash can fires! Lots and lots of trash can fires.There's no daytime. Everything happens at night - in every time zone.Asians run everything.Interaction with computers and the internet is done through virtual reality. Ice-T, Henry Rollins, and Dolph Lundgren give great, campy performances, while Keanu Reaves delivers a Keanu Reaves-like performance a role which was almost certainly written with Keanu Reaves in mind. There's an interesting mix of weaponry, including high-power automatic weapons, and this weird light-saber laser whip thingy that for some reason only one person gets to have. One the other hand, these are no match for cross-bows, throwing stars, and knives - and of course, there's the magic (spoiler redacted). So crack a beer, sit back, and enjoy what people once thought now would look like.

A data courier, literally carrying a data package inside his head, must deliver it before he dies from the burden or is killed by the Yakuza. Once i heard about this movie i couldn't wait to watch it i mean Keanu Reeves (The Matrix) and Dolph Lundgren (Rocky IV) in the same movie? this should be amazing right? this should be great right? Not really because the film was boring and so dumb that i couldn't even finish the whole damn thing and once Lundgren showed up i was so devastated that i just skipped the whole thing i tried so hard to finish it but i couldn't it was really terrible probably one of the worst from the 90's to be honest.

"Johnny Mnemonic," released in 1995, had a lot of things going for it, with just as many things working against it. "Terminator 2: Judgment Day" (1991) had made a critical and commercial breakthrough in CGI special effects, and the visually dazzling "The Lawnmower Man" in 1992 helped to continue the trend. "The Lawnmower Man" was one of the earliest cyber-thrillers of the 1990s, picking up on the increasing relevance of computer technology and the nascent Internet craze (as well as the rising popularity of Japanese Anime'), thus paving the way for CGI special effects-laden cyber-thrillers like "Johnny Mnemonic" to make another breakthrough."Johnny Mnemonic" was a critical and commercial disappointment, but the film has nonetheless gained something of a cult status - again due largely to the underground cyberpunk sub-genre of science fiction, and, of course, the landmark breakthrough success of "The Matrix" (1999), which brought all this stuff together (amongst other influences from disparate genres) in one epic 136-minute feature and effectively legitimized cyberpunk and science fiction for the new millennium.In that regard, "Johnny Mnemonic" wasn't so much a failed effort as it was a premature one. Put simply, despite the underground popularity of cyberpunk and the increasing visibility of the computer hacker subculture, critics and audiences simply may not have been ready for this film - and aside from the usual quibbles with hammy dialogue and spotty direction. I was 10 in 1995, and vaguely recall the previews for this movie, and not paying any attention to it - because my mind was focused elsewhere. But I've seen the film off and on over the years, and after seeing "The Matrix" and reading up a little bit on cyberpunk, it becomes much easier to make the connection to "Johnny Mnemonic" (as well as the Anime' classic "Ghost in the Shell," which came out the same year as this film, and 1982's "Blade Runner").Science fiction author William Gibson - who wrote the seminal cyberpunk novel "Neuromancer" in 1984 - wrote the screenplay for "Johnny Mnemonic," which is adapted from one of his short stories. Robert Longo directed the film, and it stars Keanu Reeves, who at that time was hot off the success of "Speed" from one year before in 1994. Reeves may have been this film's other hindrance, which critics most likely picked up on, too.I've been saying for years that Reeves is an actor who knows his strengths and his weaknesses, and knows what he can and can't do as a performer - yet not everybody, critics and directors alike, seem aware of that. That doesn't necessarily make him a bad actor, but it shows that he's honest, and that he's more aware of his abilities than most people are willing to admit. But that's just my opinion; I'm sure others feel completely different about it.The film is set in January of 2021 - just five years from now - and is set at first in Beijing and later Newark, New Jersey. Reeves plays the title character, a "wet-wired" data courier (basically, a human hard drive) who is able to carry digitized data via a computer chip implant in his brain. At the beginning of the film, Japanese businessmen hire him to carry a large, classified data package to New Jersey, but just as the process is completed, assassins working for the Yakuza (Japanese mafia) come in and kill the executives. Johnny manages to barely escape with his life.Johnny then learns that the classified data that was downloaded into his head is too much for his brain to carry (320 gigabytes, which is apparently double the amount he can safely handle), and will kill him in two or three days time if it's not removed in time. Hounded by the Yakuza, who are led by a ruthless assassin named Shinji (Denis Akiyama, who carries a very lethal weapon to do his kills), as well as a crazed Street Preacher (Dolph Lundgren), Johnny has nowhere to turn to - with everyone, wanting his head served on a silver platter, literally, to Japanese pharmaceutical executive Takahashi (Takeshi) - except for a wannabe-bodyguard named Jane (Dina Meyer), an ex-doctor named Spider (Henry Rollins), and rebel leader J-Bone (Ice-T).There are action sequences and there are special effects - most of which would be considered laughable with today's advances in CGI technology, but were pretty state-of-the-art at the time of this film's release just 21 years ago. The film is by no means perfect, but it's really impressive to see Keanu Reeves in a cyber-thriller made just four years before he took the Red Pill in "The Matrix" and would change everything as we know it. But he's not Neo yet, and he can't defy gravity in "bullet time" - yet."Johnny Mnemonic" works best as a time capsule, and as perhaps a launching pad for future ideas, the same ideas that had been popular in cyberpunk science fiction for years by that point, but would not reach popular, mainstream acceptance for another four years.^ Whoa, at that last statement.P.S.: That Anime' film that the Japanese businessmen are watching at the beginning of the movie is "Demon City Shinjuku" (1988). LOL!7/10

Like - WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED HERE??!! This Sci-Fi/Action/Thriller sure could have been about 10 zillion times better.Johnny Mnemonic certainly had oodles, and oodles of potential. I think that it could've easily been considered a kick-ass contender for a prime position right up there alongside The Matrix. But, unfortunately, this flick went nowhere. And it went there, fast.Set in the year 2021 where filth and ugliness prevails - Johnny is a 'Mnemonic Data Carrier' carrying 320 gigabytes of ultimately crucial information contained on a memory chip that has been surgically implanted directly into his brain. At this point, Johnny's information storage capacity is dangerously overloaded.Pursued by ruthless agents and deadly cyborgs, Johnny must deliver this all-important data to Newark within 24 hours, or else he must die.Johnny Mnemonic, most certainly, had a truly fascinating premise that if handled properly could've ranked it right up there with some of the best Sci-Fi films of all time. But, instead, all we are offered was a film that ranked right down there with some of the worst from that genre, ever. I'm not joking.Johnny Mnemonic is an utterly forgettable flick filled to overflowing with totally uninteresting characters mouthing laughable dialogue set against the back-drop of a hideous landscape of urban hell.