Speed, the action thriller, proved that Keanu Reeves is a certified star, and now he is trying is luck in yet another genre, the sci-fi thriller.
This year, 1995, may be a crucial one in Reeves’ career, for he appears in two or three very different movies. TriStar hopes to cash on the success of Reeves’ spring release, the romantic melodrama “A Walk in the Clouds,” in which the heartthrob plays a chocolate salesman who falls in love with an upper class Mexican woman.
In the new film, Reeves is cast as a high-tech courier, on the run with stolen data in his chip-implanted brain. The priceless info he carries can cost him his life: Data overload threatens to destroy him, and a ruthless global crime syndicate will stop at nothing to recover the information.
“Cyberpunk” author William Gibson brings one of his best-known stories to the screen for the first time. Unfortunately, as a sci-fi set in the twenty-first century, “Johnny Mnemonic” is not very engaging and leaves a lot to be desired.
I wish another helmer were assigned to this potentially interesting tale, since the film is poorly directed by Robert Longo in his feature debut; the assignment calls for a more experienced director.
I have no doubts that compromised as it is, “Johnny Mnemonic” will launch a film cycle since it takes us on a wild ride down the dark side of the information highway to a place where technology has taken some exciting, unpredictable but also lethal turns.
