« Johnny Mnemonic », Keanu Reeves in a Cyberpunk thriller intended for oblivion (but warning)

On April 15, 1995 he came out in advance in Japanese theaters Johnny Mnemonic by Robert Longo (in the US ones will arrive in May and by us only in October), a science fiction movies to the medium budget that explores a dystopian future characterized by the information war, by the espionage high tech and from the greed of the corporations.

It is based on a short story and 1981 of the same name (inserted in the fundamental anthology The night we burn Chrome) signed William Gibson, the literary architect of cyberpunk (His supplementary text of the genre, Neuromante/Neuromancer, 1984, in which the Cyberspazio concept), which codified the digital future in the coordinates of a technological nightmare.

Despite its contingently second place place in the history of cinema tout court, the film is still considered one of the fundamental works among the transpositions for the screen of the genre; Since, in hindsight, its theoretical foundations have offered one prescient gaze on the digital eraon the ethics of biotechnology and on the future (now asseeted in even more paradoxical and invasive forms) of the storage/control of sensitive data for purposes at the very limit of legality (and of the now impossible respect for any form of privacy).

The film is set in the near future now passed (2021) where the company is governed by megacorporations and immersed in a global virtual network, the cause of the Nervous attenuation syndrome (NAS). In this context, Johnny (Keanu Reeves) is a mnemonic courier: transports company data reserved through a brain system who canceled his childhood memories.

In Beijing, the young man accepts an assignment that exceeds the ability of its system (convinced that the payment will allow him to remove it), but during the transmission in his brain of encrypted data, the researchers are killed by a group of Yakuza led by Shinji (Denis Akiyama)at the service of Pharmakom medicinal megacorporation directed by Takahashi (Takeshi Kitano).

Johnny manages to escape with a fragment of the key to decryptionchased by the killers; and also receives visions of anFemale artificial intelligence trying to help him. Arriving in Newark, after being betrayed by his contact Ralfi (Udo Kier), Johnny is saved by Jane (Dina Meyer), one mercenary with cybernetic plantsand from the « Lo-Tek », anti-system rebels led by J-Bone (ICE-T).

When Ralfi is eliminated by Shinji, Jane Porta Johnny from Dr. Spider (Henry Rollins), who reveals that the data is A stolen cure for the NASsecret kept by Pharmakom for obvious economic reasons. However, since the available fragments are not enough to access data, Spider recommends contacting Jones, a cybernetically enhanced dolphin Decoding experthidden in the base of the Lo-Tek.

A new attack is launched by the preacher (Dolph Lundgren), a Cyber-religious killer hired by Takahashi, who kills Spider. Johnny and Jane flee and reach Jones, who tries like this the decryption; But in the meantime, Shinji attacks the base and kills Takahashi and then in turn killed by Johnny.

Jones, J-Bone and Lo-Tek reject the last assaults While the preacher is neutralized by Johnny and Jane. It is then that thanks to Jones and the mysterious ai (proved to be one Mother simulation by Johnny, a rebellious founder of Pharmakom), Johnny manages to decrypt the data and recovering his memories by allowing J-Bone to spread the cure for NAS online by triggering public revolts which lead to the destruction of the Pharmakom headquarters.

Scripted by Gibson himself (who also incorporated intuitions from another novel, Virtual light) and directed by a sort of « sole author » (Longo era a visual painter and artist New Yorker with interesting video clips that debut in the cinema with this film without ever directing another one again), Johnny Mnemonic It is an example of science fiction entertainment of swinging soliditywhich leverages a Cast with a very bizarre composition in search of a high/low microsyndationalism (how to define otherwise a film that sees in the same cast a giant like Takeshi Kitano and two icons of coeval music such as the hardcore star punk Henry Rollins and the Rapper Ice-T?), Which obviously has an added value a reflection on the relationship between humanity and technology carried out according to the canonical methods of the representation of the Gibsonian future: a dystopian landscape Informed by fixed themes (the logic of control, the modification of the body, the loss of individuality, the hyperdigitalization of the existing).

The chip implanted in Johnnywhich serves as its means of survival in oneEconomy dominated by datais emblematic of utopia cyberpunk of human improvement through technology; a Augmented Technology potentially beneficial that However, leads to alienation (therefore prefigurer of the era of addiction to device) through the erosion of the sense of reality.

Johnny Mnemonic presents a world (very similar to the one in which we actually ended up descending to Patti) in which the most precious goods It is no longer a natural resource or physical work, but information: thus dragging the natural implications on the fate of privacy and the manipulation of public perception through the media and data control, themes that still remain central in the debate on the digital era.

Despite the goodness of the intentions far exceeded the final result (at the time of its release The criticism was far from benevolentdefinitely not wrong) and his fate in the collective imagination was that of an oblivion almost instantaneous, of his revision of his makes him to some extent a vaguely warmer object although now aesthetically overcome by time.

Like a floppy disk forgotten in the bottom of a drawer which, reopened today, seems to show more than we could imagine or remember.