CINEMA: Justin Pearce
IT was a genius who cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as an android in Terminator II. No longer did apologists have to make excuses about the man’s perpetually stony countenance — androids don’t express emotion, after all, so all Arnie had to do was to say “hasta la vista, baby” in a talking-clock monotone and audiences dropped their popcorn at how cute it was.
So it is with Johnny Mnemonic. There is a fairly general consensus that Keanu Reeves can’t act (though some careful observers claim to have detected a flicker of talent in My Own Private Idaho). So in the absence of androids (they are kinda passe now), it was a good idea to cast Reeves as someone who has had a large part of the contents of his brain erased in order to make room for several gigabytes of data belonging to a pharmaceutical company.
Instead of sympathising with Johnny’s anguish at having had his childhood memories wiped out (Keanu doing anguish looks just the same as Keanu doing joy, terror or sexual arousal), all we have to do is assume that a large part of his personality has also suffered a major hard-drive crash. There’s a script to match, giving Johnny terse, throwaway lines such as “Next time knock, baldy” after he’s disposed of a sinister oriental bathroom-intruder — a comment worthy of Arnie at his most laconic.
But if the supposed gaps in Johnny’s cognitive functioning help to explain Reeves’ acting, they are no excuse for a plot that’s too full of loose ends to lift it above the level of pulp sci-fi. Likewise the production design: it’s okay, but it does make you wonder why, after all these years, they couldn’t have improved on Blade Runner. Or even Mad Max.
It’s not that Johnny Mnemonic is bad — it just doesn’t live up to the expectations created by the name of William Gibson. See it as a middle-of-the-road sci-fi-cum- action flick and you’ll do fine. And of course, Keanu watchers can gasp almost as much as they did in Speed. The topless opening scene is not repeated, however, so go home after the first 10 minutes, or wait for the video and replay to your hormones’ content.
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