Johnny Mnemonic (lm)

Johnny Mnemonic is a 1995 Canadian-American

cyberpunk action thriller lm directed by Robert Longo
in his directorial debut. The lm stars Keanu Reeves and
Dolph Lundgren. The lm is based on the story of the
same name by William Gibson. Keanu Reeves plays the
title character, a man with a cybernetic brain implant designed to store information. The lm portrays Gibsons
dystopian view of the future with the world dominated by
megacorporations and with strong East Asian inuences.
This was Dolph Lundgrens last theatrical release lm until 2010s The Expendables.

One is the international pharmacological company, Pharmakom, led by its United States executive, Takahashi,
who believes the data to be critical to the companys interests. The other is the Yakuza guided by Shinji, who
wishes to deny this information to Takahashi and claim
it for themselves. Johnny soon learns that Ral is in the
Yakuzas employ, and ready to kill Johnny to extract the
data storage hardware. Jane, a cybernetically-enhanced
bodyguard, helps Johnny to escape, and aided by the LoTeks, an anti-establishment group led by J-Bone, they
elude their pursuers.

The lm was shot on location in Canada, with Toronto

and Montreal lling in for the lms Newark and Beijing
settings. A number of local sites, including Torontos
Union Station and Montreals skyline and Jacques Cartier
Bridge, feature prominently.

Jane takes Johnny to meet her friend and street doctor

Spider who had installed Janes implants. In discussions,
Spider reveals he and his allies at a local clinic were to be
the recipients of Johnnys data, supposedly Pharmakoms
unpublished cure for nerve attenuation syndrome, a
plague ravaging mankind, due to the over-reliance on
technology, and causing political strife. Though Spider could remove Johnnys implant, this may cause both
the loss of this invaluable data as well as Johnnys life;
instead, Spider directs Johnny to Jones, who resides at
Heaven, the Lo-Tek base built on the underside of the
Brooklyn Bridge. The clinic is soon invaded by the assassin Karl, the Street Preacher hired by Takahashi to retrieve Johnnys head before Shinji can; Spider is killed
while Johnny and Jane escape.

The lm premiered in Japan on April 15, 1995, in a

longer version (103 mins) that is closer to the directors
cut, featuring a score by Mychael Danna and dierent
editing.[2] The lm was released in the United States on
May 26, 1995.

Plot

In 2021, Johnny is a mnemonic courier with a data storage device implanted in his brain, allowing him to discreetly carry information too sensitive to transfer across
the Net, the virtual-reality equivalent of the Internet.
While lucrative, the implant has cost Johnny his childhood memories, and he seeks to have the implant removed to regain his memories back; his handler, Ral
assigns him one more job that would cover the costs of
the operation (which are extremely expensive), sending
Johnny to Beijing to deliver the latest information.

At Heaven, they nd that Jones is a dolphin, once used by

the Navy for his decryption capabilities. Jones attempts
to discover the remainder of the password to the data,
but Heaven is soon attacked by the Yakuza, Takahashis
forces, and the Street Preacher. Johnny, Jane, and the
Lo-Teks ght o all three groups and emerge victorious,
killing Takahashi, Shinji, the Street Preacher, and their
agents. Takahashi, in a dying gesture, provides Johnny
with a portion of the remaining password. While this
helps, Johnny is told by J-Bone that he must hack his
At the designated place, he nds a group of frantic scien- own brain to nd the nal portion, unlocking the data so
tists who have the data he is to carry, but it far exceeds that the Lo-Teks can download it and transmit it across
Johnnys storage capacity of 80 GB, even with the use of the globe.
compression folders to decrease the size of the informa- Johnny and Jones again start the procedure but nd themtion, and if he tries to upload the data in, the remaining selves helped by a mysterious articial intelligence that
amount of data will be uploaded directly in his brain, caus- operates from Pharmakoms mainframe, providing the
ing severe psychological damage and potentially, death. last portion of the password to unlock the data. The data
Johnny accepts anyway, in need of the money. After up- for the NAS cure is safely recovered and Johnny discovloading their data, the group is massacred by Yakuza, but ers he can now recall his memories of his youth, including
Johnny manages to escape with a portion of the encryp- his mother and family. As Johnny recovers from the protion password.
cess, he, Jane, and the Lo-Teks observe the Pharmakom
After contacting Ral, Johnny returns to Newark and building on re, a sign that the cures transmission was
soon nds that two groups are after the data he carries. successful.
1

Cast
Keanu Reeves as Johnny Mnemonic
Dina Meyer as Jane
Ice-T as J-Bone
Takeshi Kitano as Takahashi

PRODUCTION

an overexposure to electromagnetic radiation from omnipresent technological devices, and is presented as a raging epidemic aecting the world in the future. The plot
of the lm revolves around the one pharmaceutical corporation that has found a cure but chooses to withhold it
from the public in favor of a more lucrative treatment program. The code-cracking Navy dolphin Joness reliance
on heroin was one of many scenes cut during an editing
process.[4]

Denis Akiyama as Shinji

Dolph Lundgren as Karl Honig
Henry Rollins as Spider
Barbara Sukowa as Anna Kalmann
Udo Kier as Ral
Tracy Tweed as Pretty

Basically what happened was it was taken

away and re-cut by the American distributor
in the last month of its pre-release life, and it
went from being a very funny, very alternative
piece of work to being something that had
been very unsuccessfully chopped and cut into
something more mainstream.
William Gibson, in interview with The
Peak magazine, 19 October 1998[6]

Falconer Abraham as Yomamma

Don Francks as Hooky
Diego Chambers as Henson
Sherry Miller as Takahashis Secretary
Arthur Eng as Viet

Production

Longo and Gibson originally envisaged making an art lm

on a small budget, but failed to get nancing. Longo commented that the project started out as an arty 1-milliondollar movie, and it became a 30-million-dollar movie
because we couldn't get a million and a half.[3] The unbounded spread of the Internet in the early 1990s and the
consequent rapid growth of high technology culture had
made cyberpunk increasingly relevant, and this was a primary motivation for Sony Picturess decision to fund the
project in the tens of millions.[4] Prior to its release, the
lm had been hailed by critic Amy Harmon as an epochal
moment when cyberpunk counterculture would enter the
mainstream.[4]

3.1

Dierences from the source material

The story in the movie signicantly deviates from the

short story, most notably turning Johnny, not his bodyguard partner, into the primary action gure. In fact, the
movie transforms Molly Millions into Jane, as the lm
rights to Molly were owned by a company unaliated
with the lms producers.[5]
Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS) is a ctional disease in the lm, which is not present in the short
story. NAS, also called the black shakes, is caused by

News of the compromises of the script spurred prerelease concerns that the lm would prove a disappointment to hardcore cyberpunks,[4] a fear which was ultimately borne out by the lms reception.

3.2 Japanese release

The lm was released in Japan rst, in a version closer to
the directors vision.
The Japanese soundtrack was composed by Mychael
Danna but re-composed by Brad Fiedel for the international version. It also contains tracks from independent
industrial band Black Rain who had initially recorded a
score for Robert Longo that had been rejected.
There are three extended scenes revolving around
the character of Takahashi, as the actor portraying
this character, Takeshi Kitano, is a popular entertainer/director/actor in Japan. These scenes include:
Takahashi sitting in what appears to be his late daughters room, watching a 3D hologram of his daughter playing; Takahashi watching a videotape of his daughter while
self-medicating, and Takahashi killing two of Shinjis
henchmen as punishment for bringing them under his
command without permission.
A number of other dierences exist in the Japanese version. There is no laser eect added to the opening text,
which is plain, white and scrolling. The scene near the
beginning with the protesters is longer, with extensive
crane shots and the voice of a news anchor in the background. There is a scene added in the Beijing Hotel where
Johnny obtains the memory doubler from a dealer who
informs him that he was unable to get an upgrade as advanced as was originally agreed upon. In the scene in
the mens restroom at the club where Ral (Udo Kier)
yells at his bodyguard for hitting Johnny on the head, the

3
bodyguard states that it had been a long time since she
was in this room. In the book, the Dog Sisters (bodyguards) are muscle grafted creations, and are lovers, one
of whom was originally a man. Jane refers to her grenade
as a bottle opener on two dierent occasions instead of
the US dialogue that refers to it simply as a grenade. The
Street Preacher (also known as Karl Honig and played by
Dolph Lundgren) character has an added scene where he
is addressing his followers where he claims to have been
stricken by the sickness that devours the silver pathways
of the soul, and has been healed by the Lord making him
post-human. He then notices Takahashis henchmen arriving with a cryogenic container (for Johnnys head) and
tells his followers that he must now leave to meditate.
Throughout the movie, his character has a few extra lines
that are shouted out during action scenes.
There are minor additions (usually less than a second or
two in length) throughout the lm. The scenes where the
troops storm the bridge near have been edited resulting in
a slightly dierent order of events. The nal hack your
own brain sequence has also been similarly edited with
the inclusion of altered dialogue.[2][7]

on the lm designed by George Gomez was released in

August 1995 by Williams.
Sony realised early on the potential for the reaching their
target demographic through Internet marketing, and its
new-technology division promoted the lm with an online
scavenger hunt oering $20,000 in prizes. One executive
was quoted as remarking We see the Internet as turbocharged word-of-mouth. Instead of one person telling another person something good is happening, its one person telling millions!".[4] The lms website facilitated further cross-promotion by selling Sony Signatures-issued
Johnny Mnemonic merchandise such as a hack your own
brain T-shirt and Pharmakom coee cups. Screenwriter
William Gibson was deployed to eld questions about
the videogame from fans online. The habitually reclusive
novelist, who despite creating in cyberspace one of the
core metaphors for the internet age had never personally
been on the Internet, likened the experience to taking a
shower with a raincoat on and trying to do philosophy
in Morse code.[4]

5 Reception
4

Transmedia presence and promotion

I've never been comfortable with the marketing of my art

... but the nature of commodication sometimes requires
my presence. In this case, I thought that the gentlemanly
thing to do was to oblige them and go on-line. With the
treasure hunt, it seemed to me that that is Sony trying
to explore the landscape. Its not the users exploring cyberspace, its Sony saying, 'Is this what we can do?' So I
thought it was kind of cute.

Screenwriter William Gibson as quoted by the Los

Angeles Times[4]
Johnny Mnemonic was touted with pride by Sony as a lm
project of unparalleled corporate synergy. Simultaneous
with Sony Pictures release of the lm, its soundtrack was
released by Sony subsidiary Columbia Records, while the
corporations digital eects division Sony ImageWorks
issued a CD-ROM videogame version for DOS, Mac
and Windows 3.x.[4] The Johnny Mnemonic videogame,
which was developed by Evolutionary Publishing, Inc.
and directed by Douglas Gayeton, oered an innovative
interface and 90 minutes of full motion video storytelling
and puzzles.[8][9] A Mega-CD/Sega CD version of the
game was also developed, but never released despite being fully completed. This version was eventually leaked
on the Internet many years later. A pinball machine based

Critical response was negative overall and it holds a 14%

rating on Rotten Tomatoes from 29 critics.[10] The lm
was a nancial disappointment in the USA, grossing
$19,075,720 in the domestic American market against
its $26m budget. It was released in the United States on
May 26, 1995 to 2,030 theaters, grossing $6,033,850 in
the opening weekend. However, the lm was much more
successful worldwide, grossing $52,400,000 in total.[1]
Reevess performance in the lm earned him a Golden
Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for
A Walk in the Clouds), but lost to Pauly Shore for Jury
Duty.

6 References
[1] Johnny Mnemonic (1995)". Box Oce Mojo (IMDb).
Retrieved April 5, 2011.
[2] Johnny Mnemonic Japanese release 1995, 103 minutes,
Color, English/Japanese.
[3] van Bakel, Rogier. Remembering Johnny. Wired
(Cond Nast Publications) 3 (6). Retrieved August 19,
2010.
[4] Harmon, Amy (May 24, 1995). Crossing Cyberpunks
Threshold: Hollywood: Author William Gibsons dark
view of the future hits the mainstream this week in Johnny
Mnemonic.. Los Angeles Times (Tribune Company). Retrieved April 5, 2011.
[5] Dillard, Brian J. Johnny Mnemonic > Review. Allmovie
(All Media Guide). Retrieved April 5, 2011.

[6] Lincoln, Ben (October 19, 1998). Arts: Cyberpunk on

screen - William Gibson speaks. The Peak 100 (7).
[7] Johnny Mnemonic (Comparison: International Version Japanese Extended Version) - Movie-Censorship.com
[8] Nashawaty, Chris (June 2, 1995). Johnny Mnemonic.
Entertainment Weekly (Time Warner). Retrieved April 5,
2011.
[9] Johnny Mnemonic for Macintosh (1995)". MobyGames.
Retrieved April 5, 2011.
[10] Johnny Mnemonic Movie Reviews. Rotten Tomatoes
(Flixster). Retrieved April 5, 2011.

External links
Johnny Mnemonic at the Internet Movie Database
Johnny Mnemonic at Rotten Tomatoes
"Johnny Mnemonic Deleted Scenes on YouTube

EXTERNAL LINKS

Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses

8.1

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Johnny Mnemonic (lm) Source:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Mnemonic_(film)?oldid=696925631 Contributors:
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8.2

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8.3

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