Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Title: Johnny Mnemonic (1994)

Director: Robert Longo

Cast: Keanu Reeves, Udo Kier, Takeshi Kitano, Dolph Lungdren, Henry Rollins, Ice –T, Dina Meyer

Universally panned by critics and a bonafide box office bomb, Johnny Mnemonic was a disaster financially, it made roughly 19 million on a budget of 26, this even though it starred Keanu Reeves, an actor whose career was smoking red hot at that particular moment in time. You see, Reeves had just finished making Jan De Bont’s Speed (1994) when he decided to jump on the Johnny Mnemonic bandwagon. Speed was an extremely successful film at the box office and a great career move for Keanu; it raised his status as an actor by turning him into box office gold. So considering how popular Reeves was at the time, why did Johnny Mnemonic end up being such an epic fail? It certainly wasn’t because of lack of star power. The film also starred Dolph Lungdren as a crazy homicidal preacher, Udo Kier as a techno agent, Henry Rollins and Ice-T as rebel leaders and Takeshi Kitano (of Sonatine fame) as the head of a an evil corporation. Maybe the film failed because it wasn’t that good? Could it be that it disappointed audiences or hardcore cyberpunk fans somehow?

In the film Johnny Mnemonic is a courier, which is just a fancy word for delivery man. The thing is that the guy is a courier of digital data that he carries somewhere in the back of his mind. Problem is the package he’s just uploaded is huge and exceeding storage capacity can kill you! You see, in this future a big percentage of humanity is suffering from a decease called N.A.S., which stands for Nerve Attenuation Syndrome.  Basically, N.A.S. is a condition that affects the human nervous system and is caused by the onslaught of electronic devices to which humanity is exposed to in a daily basis. Technology is making humanity sick and it’s because of information overload, airwaves poisoned by technological civilization. Humanity just can’t live without their gadgets. Good thing is that there’s a cure, bad thing is that the powers that be don’t want humanity to have it because they’d rather have people as patients, paying for their costly treatments for N.A.S. But wait, there’s hope! A group of rebel scientists are hell bent on releasing the cure for N.A.S. to the free world! These rebels fight against the system and humanities dependency on technology. From time to time they send subversive messages to the masses through television saying things like “Snatch back your brain zombie, and hold it!” To make everything right all they have to do is send the cure from Beijing to New Wark; via courier.  That’s where Johnny Mnemonic comes into play. Will Johnny make it in time before the overload of information in his brain kills him?

This project had many good things going for it, number one, the screenplay was written by the ‘father of cyberpunk’ William Gibson. Who’s William Gibson you say, well, he’s the guy responsible for writing the very first cyberpunk novels, novels about technologically suffocated societies in which people are more mechanical than human, worlds in which people spend more time in the virtual world than in the real world. This is a wing of science fiction that focuses on “high tech, low life”. Gibson wrote ‘Neuromancer’ one of the seminal works of the cyberpunk genre; it’s a story about a hacker who’s hired to pull off the mother of all hacks. The novel takes place in this Blade Runner like world with problems like over population and again, a society over dependent on technology. Neuromancer is so thick I’ve yet to finish reading it! It’s quite dense, a true challenge to read, and this comes from someone who fancies himself a science fiction fan! This fascinating and at times nightmarish book holds some similarities with Johnny Mnemonic; actually it even shares some characters. Johnny Mnemonic in turn is a film that’s based on another one of Gibson’s works; a short story entitled ‘Johnny Mnemonic’ which was first published in Omni magazine, and later re-printed in Gibson’s collection of short fiction stories called ‘Burning Chrome’, a book I will be acquiring soon! Johnny Mnemonic by the way is one of Gibson’s first works, first published way back in 1981, so it’s fitting in a way that one of his earliest works is the first to get the big screen treatment. 

For the longest time (as far back as 1989) Gibson and his pal Robert Lungo (who ended up sitting on the director’s chair) had been trying to get funding for Johnny Mnemonic. In their minds, Johnny Mnemonic was a film that could be pulled off for a mere 1.5 million dollars; in other words, they wanted to take an art house approach to this story; an artsy version of Johnny Mnemonic. A small yet creative film, and I gotta wonder what that film might have turned out like. But it kept getting harder and harder to get any financial backing for the film because studios didn’t like the fact that they were trying to make such a small film. Studios like multimillion dollar productions with big stars attached to them, something big and bombastic, something they can sell. Things finally pulled through when Keanu Reeves read the script (which myth has it was left at his door step!) and decided to do the movie. It was then that the studios started offering the millions to Gibson and Lungo. After much trepidation, the project finally found its funding! So after so many years of trying to get this movie made, was it finally worth it?

Well, first things first, there’s no denying that this film turned out to be a quite influential piece of cinema. The directors behind The Matrix Trilogy; the Wachowski Bros. obviously saw this film and decided they could do something similar, but better. It’s just so obvious, damn, right down to the fact that they also used Keanu Reeves for The Matrix. At one point Johnny says his name is “Mr. Smith”, he plugs himself into a virtual world and travels through it. Keanu dresses with a white shirt, black suit and tie. Johnny is kind of like a Christ figure, same as Neo. And basically, the whole film has a theme about “waking people up”, so yeah, there’s no doubt this one, along with Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell (1995) served as a major influence for The Matrix. Other films that Johnny Mnemonic is similar to? Well, there’s Cyborg (1989) and Babylon A.D. (2008), two films that are also about a courier transporting the cure for a decease that’s threatening the world, and most recently Elysium (2013) played with the same ideas. 

Johnny Mnemonic is a film that science fiction fans will no doubt enjoy because it presents us with this dark, technological world in chaos, kind of like what we saw in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982), but with the added element of seeing technology as mankind’s villain, as a detriment to society, a hindrance that disconnects us from our humanity. Which isn’t so farfetched when we consider how connected we all are to our smart phones, I-Pads, I-Pods and laptops;  so in many ways it’s a reflection of our society and how addicted we are to technology, could we live without it nowadays? How lost would we be on this planet without our technological advances? Has humanity separated itself so much from the natural world, that we now don’t even know how to survive in it? I mean we actually live in a time when going out to dinner means telling everybody on the table to turn their phones off so we won’t be distracted by a call, a text message or candy crush. Aside from the films themes, I also enjoy a lot of the visuals that a movie like this one has to offer. I mean, how cool does Johnny Mnemonic look hooked up to that Virtual Reality helmet? Very cool that’s how cool. Like Hackers (1995), The Matrix (1999), this is a movie that hackers no doubt love, because the hacker is the hero. Some of the best moments in the film are those of Johnny, hooking up to the information super highway and just hacking the hell out of it.

But then the movie is hampered by often time’s cheesy dialog and nonsensical shenanigans. Sometimes the film kind of contradicts itself, for example, there’s this dolphin in the movie that is supposed to be the savior of humanity because it’s the dolphin who handles all the data through its brain, but then the rebels, those who would fight for humanity and freedom, have this dolphin confined to this little tank that gives it no space to swim at all. To me, the dolphin looks like its being tortured, trapped in this cage filled with dirty water, then they also have the dolphin strapped to a helmet that forbids it from seeing. So we have a blind dolphin who can’t swim because the good guys need to use him? Peta would have a field day with these guys! Which brings me to another point about the film, at times it feels like the good guys aren’t really all that good, take Johnny for example, sure he’s carrying the cure on his noggin, but does he really have to stop and rant about wanting “room service and 10,000 dollars a night whores”? I guess the point is that Johnny has to learn that it’s not just about him anymore, that he has to learn to do things for others, but damn does he come off as self centered. Then we got the leader of the rebels played by Ice-T, and well, his performance isn’t much of a stretch considering how he played basically the same character in Tank Girl (1995). The most over the top performance has to be Dolph Lundgren as the crazy preacher. He is really crazy, managing to fuse Jesus with the psychotic. He carries a crucifix around that could double as Rambo’s knife! He also spews hilarious one liners like “It’s Jesus Time!” A funny performance and certainly not what you’d expect from Dolph Lundgren.  

And now a word about the computer graphics on this show. There’s this moment in which Johnny enters cyberspace and we see him controlling his journey from the real world (sounds like The Matrix don’t it?), well, the graphics in those scenes are interesting, but unfortunately by today’s standards look outdated, they do their job of telling a story, but feel truly ancient, kind of like the computer generated imagery in Lawnmower Man (1992). They might have been “dazzling!” in their day, but now these graphics seem like child play, still, this didn’t stop my enjoyment of the film. One has to expect fx to outdate, I mean, time passes after all. Final words on Johnny Mnemonic is that it’s a cool little movie, not a masterpiece but at least it has its cool visuals and that delicious cyberpunk feel that I wish Hollywood would exploit just a bit more. In my opinion, there aren’t enough cyberpunk films out there. I can’t comment on how faithful the film is to the short story, but at least we know the film was written by William Gibson himself; if it fails it’s by Johnny Mnemonics creator’s own fault! Then again, this was one of those films that the studio took from the filmmakers and re-edited to their liking, so this might have something to do with certain inconsistencies. But whatever, faithful to the story or not, I think Johnny Mnemonic has a couple of cool things going for it that makes it worth a re-watch. Also, if you ask me, the film remains a seminal work of cyberpunk cinema, that’s gotta count for something.

Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

The Punisher (1989)

Title: The Punisher (1989)

Director: Mark Goldblatt

Writer: Boaz Yakin

Cast: Dulph Lundgren, Louis Gossett Jr., Nancy Everhard, Jeroen Krabbe

Review:

Sometimes a movie just doesn’t take off for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes, like in the case of Mark Goldblatt’s The Punisher, a film will die a quick and ugly death at the box office, not because the film is bad, but because the studio that backed it up is going down the drain. The studio in question was New World Pictures; a studio that was going bankrupt during the time The Punisher was being made.  It was going through one of those name change things, where one company buys the other and so they end up changing the companies name. Goldblatt’s The Punisher suffered promotion wise and release wise because of this. It wasn’t released theatrically in the U.S., but it did receive theatrical releases around the world, which is how I got to see it in theaters, because I live in Puerto Rico. Lucky me; this is after all, the one and only Punisher movie that’s worth a damn, so far anyways. I didn’t enjoy Jonathan Hensleigh’s The Punisher (2004), that’s the one with Thomas Jane as the titular character. I thought Thomas Jane was the worst choice to play the character, not because I don’t like Thomas Jane as an actor, but because he didn’t look the part. He didn’t look tough enough, plus, Travolta was weak as a villain and the film itself, it just didn’t do it for me. Punisher: War Zone (2008), I need to rewatch because I can’t remember much of it; but I do remember thinking that Punisher looked just right on that one, and that the action and violence was brought up a couple of notches. But for me, this 1989 version is the closest they’ve ever gotten to capturing the gritty, violent nature of Frank Castle.

The story is about Frank Castle going up against the Yakuza a.k.a. The Japanese Mafia. You see, the Yakuza wants to take over the whole drug operation in the city and they are asking for a huge cut of the earnings. Of course, the established drug lords of the city don’t like the deal that the Yakuza’s have set upon the table and so they decline the Yakuza’s offer. But the Yakuza’s won’t take no for answer, so in order to make sure the drug lords will all cooperate; the Yakuza’s kidnap the druglords kids and hold them as hostages! The Punisher a.k.a. Frank Castle, takes it upon himself to save the kids and destroy the Yakuza. Will he be able to do it?

What I like about this film is that it doesn’t focus so much on The Punisher’s back story, they don’t show us how he became The Punisher, on this film he just is The Punisher. We meet him when he has already set up camp in the sewers of the city, living in darkness and filth. What little we do see of his past we see in flashbacks, so the story doesn’t necessarily center around an origin story like so many comic book movies do. When he is not fighting crime, The Punisher likes to pray to God, while looking at pictures of his dead family. He asks god questions like: “Come on God, answer me. For years I’m asking why? Why are the innocent dead and the guilty alive? Where is justice? Where is punishment? Or have you already answered, have you already said to the world, here is justice, here is punishment. Here…in me?” This is really the best thing about this film; they portrayed The Punisher as this lost soul, completely devoid of emotion or the ability to enjoy a normal life. He is a man drowning in sadness and revenge. Lundgren’s Punisher is bitter, angry, depressed, you kind of get the feeling he’s on a death wish. This is the way that The Punisher should always be portrayed, the man is fueled by hatred for criminals, he is not a clean cut, nice dude. He is a few bullets short of blowing himself away. A far cry from the relatively wimpy version we got on The Punisher (2004). For me, Lundgren was the perfect Punisher; he doesn’t talk much but you can just see that hatred bursting out of every pore.

So you guys know me, cinematic violence and action equals awesome. Not that I’m a violent person myself (actually far from it) but movie violence is entertaining for me, the more excessive the better; and on that note, Goldblatt’s The Punisher delivers. This is the kind of action that the 80’s were known for. There are a handful of movies that I watch when I want to remember how excessive violence was in cinema during the 80s: Commando (1985), Lethal Weapon (1987), Cyborg (1989), Robocop (1987), Total Recall (1989), Die Hard (1988)…the list can go on and on. These films remind me of a time when violence in cinema was excessive, and when I compare them to today’s “action” films, well, today’s stuff just pales in comparison. I mentioned a good example of this on a recent article where I compared the new Total Recall (2012) remake with the old TotalRecall (1989). These are two films that are thematicallyl similar but are totally different in terms of violence and gore. The Punisher is one of those good old fashion action films that has shotguns shells flying, kicks, punches, stabbings, decapitations, samurai swords, you name it, they use it on this film. A little detail that’s interesting to note: The Punisher never uses the same weapon twice!   

  

This film comes to us from director Mark Goldblatt also known as the guy who directed Dead Heat (1988), which is a pretty fun zombie flick about a cop who gets turned into a zombie. Some old dude is creating zombies to steal diamonds! For what purpose? Watch the movie, but trust me, this is a fun, gory, violent, cop flick! The only way I can describe it is Lethal Weapon meets Return of the Living Dead, trust me it’s fun times for sure! Sadly, Goldblatt has never directed another film since he made The Punisher. I guess that has a lot to do with the fact that neither of these two films recuperated their budget at the box office, and you know how unforgiving Hollywood studios are! The Punisher was actually a huge turkey, it loss more than 8 million for its producers, but like I said before, it was not the films fault. This film is solid 80’s style action, it’s dark and grimy, it’s action packed and it’s deadly serious! A very underrated action flick from the decade of decadence. Need a shot of testosterone?  

Rating: 4 out of 5

The Expendables (2010)

Title: The Expendables (2010)

Director: Sylvester Stallone

Writers: Sylvester Stallone, David Callahan

Cast: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Mickey Rourke, Dolph Lungdren, Jet Li, Eric Roberts, Bruce Willis, Charisma Carpenter, Arnold Schwarznegger, Randy Couture, Steve Austin

Review:

The Expendables to me, was a celebration of 80’s awesomeness. I didn’t get to see it upon its initial release, because the damn recession is holding me back from going to the movies as much as I’d like. Sad but true. But finally when I saw the box at the video store, I swear I heard a choir of angels singing as I reached for the dvd and rented it! I was finally gonna get to see this bombastic explosion of 80’s style action. But the question remained: would it disappoint? Or would it be a great film? At the very least, I expected the film to be fun. I mean, seeing all these action stars up there was gonna be a treat no matter what my expectations for the film were.

Story goes something like this: Stallone is the leader of a group of mercenaries that call themselves The Expendables. They go around taking missions and getting paid huge amounts of cash for doing them. They kill terrorists, save hostages, you know the drill. Well, one day a guy called Mr. Church (Bruce Willis) offers The Expendables a mission. They are to go and kill a dictator named General Garza. When they get there, they realize that what they really want to do is help the rebels fight against the dictator and the men who manipulate him. Will they succeed in their mission?

I enjoyed this movie far more than I thought I would. It wasn’t a perfect film, it had its glitches here and there, but for the most part I really dug everything about this movie! Especially the themes it’s playing with. Let me tell you guys a little something about the island of Puerto Rico, where I reside. In our last elections, a new governor was chosen to rule over our land. Everyone had high hopes for this guy because the previous one had driven the country to poverty, having to close down schools and government offices for months on end. But hey, it was the beginning of the recession and anyone governing the island during those years would have had a hard time doing it anyways. So in comes this new guy offering to do things right, offering the proverbial “change” that everybody needs. So of course he won the elections. Everyone put their trust in him to make things right, to work for the people, to work for our interests. Unfortunately, this was not to be. Once in power, he fired more than 30,000 government employees and used the police force and the national guard to instill fear upon the masses by having them hit anyone and spray pepper spray on anyone who dares complain or exercise their right to speak up against the oppression. He is the kind of polititian that feels more like a businessman than a politian. This is a guy who doesn’t really care about running a country, his priorities seem to be making money, Nixon style. Hell, many have compared the guy to Hitler himself. I don’t believe there has been a more hated governor in the history of Puerto Rico, and believe me, we’ve had our share of assholes in command.

So when I see a film like The Expendables, where it criticizes this kind of abuse of power, it makes me happy to see somebody notices. I saw a documentary a while back on Jamaica called Life and Debt (2001) that showed how Americans got their hotels and their resorts in one part of the island, and now Jamaicans themselves need to have a special card to go into that section of the island. How fucked up is that? Jamaicans themselves can’t go into the exclusive American section of the island? What gives? Sad to say I am seeing the same thing developing in our own island of Puerto Rico. Tourists visit only the capital of Puerto Rico, where the grand majority of the hotels are at, while the government is making it increasingly more difficult for locals to go to that area. Now, don’t get the wrong idea, I don’t hate Americans or anything, my motto is the same one that Jackie Moon had in Semi-Pro (2008) E.L.E. Everybody Love Everybody! But seriously, this situation makes me want to puke! The situation in Jamaica is freaking sad! Governments know that tourists can bring money to the island, so they sacrifice everything else for that?? The rest of the island is falling apart! You should see how many local businesses have closed down, how many buildings are abandoned. It’s an alarming amount. Yet foreign companies like Wal-Mart and Burlington Coat Factory thrive. There is a Walgreens literally on every corner of my town (literally) while I’ve seen more then one local pharmacy go down.

So hurray for The Expendables and hurray for Stallone in wanting to shed some light on this type of behavior. I thought it was extremely interesting how the island under the dictatorship in the film is unnamed and fictional; it could probably represent Puerto Rico and Jamaica or any other country in which the same situation is happening. I identified with the character of Sandra, the revolutionary who wants to stay and fight against the evil dictators and businessmen, to fight for the freedom of her people. There is one awesome scene in which Eric Roberts (representing big business) tells General Galarza “I own you” and basically lets him know that he has to do whatever Big Business tells him to, because the funding comes from them. And of course, I love the fact that the good guys realize this is all wrong and that something has to be done about it. This let’s me know that The Expendables has its heart in the right place, at least these guys are killing and blowing shit up to stand up for what is freaking right! An action movie with a conscience! Holy shit that’s unheard of! Let’s not forget that Jason Statham stands up for women’s rights as well, defending the love of his life from an abusive boyfriend. Hurray for this movie yet again.

But let’s face it, we came here to have some fun and I gotta say I had tons of that! What I enjoyed the most was the dialog believe it or not. These guys are all aging action stars (most of them anyway) and they have a history behind them of action films. What I loved about this movie was how they kept referencing their personal lives and their film careers through the dialog of the film. Example: when Arnold Scharznegger walks into the film and he and Stallone meet we are led to believe that they are both leaders of different mercenary groups and that at one time, they worked together. Translation? “We both used to be action stars at one point”. Arnold says he doesn’t need the gig so he is giving the mission to Stallone and his crew. The dialog that follows that conversation goes something like this:

Arnold: “Give this job to my friend here, he LOVES playing in the jungle, right?

Stallone: Right.

Arnold: Hey, how about dinner?

Stallone: When?

Arnold: In a thousand years?

Stallone: Too Soon.

Bruce Willis: What’s his problem?

Stallone: He wants to be the president.

In this conversation, the animosity that Arnold and Stallone had during the 80’s is alluded to. You remember how it was right? They use to make fun of each other in their respective movies. They kind of acknowledged each others existence and were willing to make fun of each other, but they still kind of hated each others guts. I always got the idea that it was all in good fun anyways, this movie proves it. And the line “he loves playing in the jungle” is an obvious reference to Stallone’s Rambo films. And then the two go on about weight, and Stallone tells Arnold, “whatever weight I loss you found pal” And the film goes on and on like that. Speaking of Arnold’s participation in this film, it is so freaking robotic. He kind of like walked through the scene not even trying to act, he had this silly grin on his face the whole time, honestly people? To me, Arnold was the worst thing about this whole movie, and in all honesty, that whole scene (though kind of funny) was terrible because the dialog felt robotic. I almost got the feeling like none of the actors were actually together; it felt as if they all filmed their scenes separately; the one sour note in an otherwise great flick.

Its all in good fun!

Speaking of performances, I was amazed to find out that the best actor in the whole film ended up being Dolph Lungdren. Man, Lungdren is a better actor now then he ever was! EVER. The guy hasn’t stopped acting and let’s not forget he directs his own films, so as far as I’m concerned, the guy is still very much in his game. Lungdren has actually gotten better with age! Holy shit, he was devouring his scenes, making all the other action stars including Stallone himself look bad. There is this moment in which Mickey Rourke shows up and tells this story, it is a small part, which can be considered a cameo, but damn, he really gave it his all. Kind of makes you wonder what’s a real actor with some real acting talent doing in the midst of all these action guys, who’s one specialty is kicking, punching and blowing shit up? Lungdren and Rourke both surprised me, and stood out like a cockroaches in a chicken dance.

Statham, taking action to a whole other level!

I liked that fun vibe the film had; it reminded me of the silly premises and ideas that we used to see in films of the 80’s. I mean, seeing these guys flying around on a plane, as if they were this special team of rebels going up against the evils of the world, I kind of got the feeling I was watching another version of the A-Team. Cigar chomping tough guys with secret handshakes, beautiful women, fighting over who kills the best and who kills the fastest.

Stallone, behind the camera, directing

It seems to that with this film, Stallone is passing the torch to Statham as the current king of action films, not a bad assessment. The film ends with Statham and the rest of the crew relaxing at Mickey Rourke’s tattoo shop (makes perfect sense for his character to have one don’t it?) having a knife throwing contest, all the other action stars kind of miss, but Statham ends up winning, perfectly hitting the middle of the mark with the knife. It’s as if Stallone was saying “this is the guy who’s taken my place okay and I give him my blessing” Plus, its obvious Stallone likes Statham. Statham is the one with the most screen time out of all the action guys and hes always next to Stallone through out the whole film. Hell, he is next to him in the freaking poster. So, according to Stallone, Statham is this generation king of action films.

"So you want it to say Schwarznegger sucks? You Sure?"

Final words: fun times. Storyline might be generic cause we’ve seen this story of the good guys going against the oppressive government before, but hey, guess what? This type of thing is still happening in the world, so it’s freaking relevant. We need some real revolutionaries NOW, but whatever, till they arrive, I guess we got The Expendables to take care of business and make things right, at least in the film world.

Rating: 3 ½ out of 5