Johnny Mnemonic

Writer William Gibson wrote many interesting short stories; his TV and film careers however have been met with decidedly less enthusiasm. With most professional reviewers looking down on the film rendition of his short story Johnny Mnemonic its small wonder his film career is not often seen in the spotlight.

“It looks as though Longo were trying to follow a generic recipe rather than his own narrative intuition. It makes you wish he had indulged the impulses toward fragmentation, layering and abstraction that shaped his gallery art as well as his nearly unintelligible but interesting Arena Brains.” Johnson’s review of the film focuses more closely director Robert Longo whom was at the time working on his first film. Though Longo expressed a wish to start with a low budget film, his working with Gibson attracted extra funding and unfortunately much higher expectations.

These expectations seem to be the source of the films overall pitiful review scores. Owen Gleiberman of entertainment weekly gave Jonny Mnemonic a C-, calling the film a Blade Runner knockoff with a lifted style and visual themes of your average B movie. This seems to be an aesthetic criticism and Gleiberman’s C- ranking seems rather generous for his relentless bashing in his review of the writing and especially the lead actor Keanu Reeves. With this observation of the scenery as B movie quality it only serves to show the influence of a starting director who intended to create a low budget film and managed to pull it off despite a larger than expected budget.

Christian Spotlight contributor Alex Yeoh was even more critical of the film with a rating of one and a half stars and going so far as to request readers: “Avoid it at all costs, and walk out if friends rent it out from the video store.” Yeoh of course writes from the point of view of a conservative and protective Christian parent (most writers on Christian Spotlight are either Parents or spiritual leaders.) He makes points of what he sees as unnecessary implants, lots of profanity, violence, and bad lines. Though he incorrectly claims the Street Preacher’s name is “Jesus” he is correct that the character misquotes scripture. This can be attributed however to the dystopian environment and the obviously demented individuals own interpretations of scripture.

The viewer response to this article, by Dave Clark, matches well to my own views of the movie. The viewer points out that the film was based on Gibson’s short stories a view of Jonny Mnemonic with inspirations pulled from Neuromancer, corrects Yeoh on the name of the Street Preacher. He makes the concession that this is obviously not your perfect Christian movie, “But appreciates art and script writing too.”

Richard Scheib gives a much more in-depth review going into the background of Gibson and even giving a look at what the film is often in competition with. It’s from this article that I learned about Gibson’s other contributions to the video medium. His work New Rose Hotel has been adapted by Abel Ferrara, and Gibson himself wrote two episodes for the well know television show The X Files. Gibson was also at one time attached to the writing for the movie Alien. I am inclined to agree with Scheib in that Jonny Mnemonic is a good movie.

Sources

Alex Yeoh: http://www.christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/pre2000/rvu-mnemonic.html

Andrea Austin: http://www.erudit.org/revue/ron/2001/v/n21/005958ar.html

Ken Johnson: http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1248/is_n10_v83/ai_17418128/pg_1?tag=artBody;col1

Owen Gleiberman: http://www.ew.com/ew/article/0,,297533,00.html

Richard Scheib: http://www.moria.co.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2104Itemid=1