'Johnny Mnemonic' best left buried in memory<\/p>\n
By Jason Tedjasukmana<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): With the blockbuster summer in full swing in the
\nStates, it seems some alternative rockers off the Lollapalooza
\nroster have found work elsewhere -- in Johnny Mnemonic, the
\nlatest film by New York artist Robert Longo.<\/p>\n
Henry Rollins, the angst-rock wordsmith formerly of Black
\nFlag, and Ice-T, Body Count front man and all-purpose hipster
\nheavy (Ricochet, New Jack City) may live on the wrong side of
\nNewark, but they're on the right side of justice in this film of
\nanimated anarchy. (Detroit residents must be thrilled that their
\ncity was for once not chosen as the devastated and detritus-
\nridden city of the future.) Enlisted to help Johnny (aka Johnny
\nMnemonic, Just Johnny, or perhaps Just Johnny Moronic) extract
\n320 gigabytes of simmering data from his Keanu Reeves brain,
\nHenry Rollins, Ice-T and a herd of Billy Idol video extras use
\ntheir streetwise sensibilities to outsmart the Japanese yakuza
\nwho are after Johnny's head full of bootlegged data from the
\nPharmakom corporation.<\/p>\n
Based on William Gibson's 1981 sci-fi short story of the same
\nname, Johnny Mnemonic picks up where Michael Jackson's Thriller
\nvideo left off, with the techno-warped mutants now leaving their
\ncemetery digs behind for a deluxe junkyard, or Heaven Node, in
\nthe sky. As a video game (Sony Imagesoft has created a CD-ROM
\nversion, sans Keanu) Johnny Mnemonic may have made for an
\ninteresting interactive experience. Once adapted to the screen,
\nhowever, Johnny goes the way of Mario Bros or Tron in
\nits lack of a storyline with any significant hook or clear
\npurpose, leaving the viewer up a creek without a joystick.<\/p>\n
As a passive, on-screen experience the viewer's patience is
\ntried as the film meanders from one post-apocalyptic set to the
\nnext. Visualization seems to be the main preoccupation of
\ndirector Robert Longo, who, like fellow New York artists David
\nSalle and Julian Schnabel, is now hoping to make a painterly
\nsplash on the big screen. Unfortunately, the artistic input of
\nJean-Phillip Carp (the brilliant set designer behind
\nDelicatessen) and the impressive sequences of computer-animated
\nbattles in cyberspace are not convincing enough to save the film
\nfrom its tedious dialog and mediocre direction.<\/p>\n
Moronic<\/p>\n
It is approximately the year 2021 and a neurological virus
\ncalled Nerve Attenuation Syndrome, or NAS, is devastating the
\npopulation. Johnny has sacrificed portions of his long term
\nmemory, and recollection of his childhood, to embark on a
\npromising career as a mnemonic courier that smuggles information
\nby way of a computer implant in his head. On his latest
\nassignment, Johnny greedily feeds his head with a barrage of
\ninformation that twice exceeds his brain's storage limit, only to
\nfind his head hemorrhaging with information that could save
\nhumanity from the dreaded NAS virus. (Put into perspective, 320
\ngigabytes of information could roughly be stored on 500 CD-ROMs.)<\/p>\n
Enter the yakuza, who want Johnny's head on a platter and the
\nNAS cure in their pocket. Love-interest\/bodyguard Dina Meyer is
\nafflicted by the black shakes, an NAS side effect, and convulses
\nher way into Johnny's heart. The two are subsequently pursued,
\nmuch like Ola Ray and Michael Jackson, by commandos, ninjas,
\nangry boardroom directors and a Jesus-freak played by Dolph
\nLundgren, all of whom have been contracted to bring in the bytes.
\nThe two are then forced to seek help from the LoTeks, an
\nunderground network of hackers dedicated to disseminating
\ntechnological truth in the face of a monolithic corporate culture
\nrun amok.<\/p>\n
Apart from the cliched battles and bloodletting, Keanu Reeves
\nhas not turned in a more wooden performance since sitting his
\nbronzed body underneath a bodhi tree in Little Buddha, Bernardo
\nBertolucci's film of equal infamy. Reeves looks as though he
\ncould have fallen off a Longo canvas in his skinny black suit and
\ntie, but his comic-book character is no more animated than the
\nstring of requisite one-liners that now plague the action-flick
\ngenre. \"Double cheese with anchovies?\" is how he enters one room.
\nIn another scene he quips, \"Next time knock, Baldy,\" after
\ntossing a clean-shaven villain through a plate-glass door.<\/p>\n
Facing decimation in one anguished moment of self-pity, Reeves
\nstands Moses-like on a heap of wreckage and screams, \"I just want
\nroom service, $10,000-a-night hookers and to have my shirts
\nlaundered at the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo.\" Not your usual last
\nrequest but quite typical of the dialog in this film, which
\npurports to have some deeper meaning. Keanu's credo is summed up
\nwhen he states that his life's philosophy has been to be careful
\nto stay in one corner in order to avoid complications. Now, much
\nto his dismay, he's confronted with the utilitarian task of
\nsacrificing his own life for the greater good of humanity.<\/p>\n
To look at Johnny Mnemonic on a deeper level, however, would
\nbe disingenuous. TriStar Pictures (which, not coincidentally, is
\nowned by Sony), spent over $35 million dollars to make a film
\nthat would appeal to teenage vidiots, not discriminating sci-fi
\nfilmgoers. The characters of Johnny Mnemonic are ultimately left
\nas flat as the paintings of Robert Longo, whose talent for
\ndirecting experimental films and rock videos is less convincing
\non a feature-length film level.<\/p>\n
And while the film's theme of globalized technology
\nbalkanizing society into those with access and those without is a
\nprovocative topic, the film treats the prospect as just another
\nwork of gangster fiction. For as visual as they may seem, the
\nworks of William Gibson, the Vancouver-based author of
\nNeuromancer, Mona Lisa Overdrive, Virtual Light and other
\ncyberpunk novels, may be better off left on the page.<\/p>",
"url": "https:\/\/jawawa.id\/newsitem\/johnny-mnemonic-best-left-buried-in-memory-1447893297",
"image": ""
},
"sponsor": "Okusi Associates",
"sponsor_url": "https:\/\/okusiassociates.com"
}