Directing his first feature, artist Longo seems dazzled, like a rabbit, by sheer visual overload.
What are people saying?
What are critics saying?
The New York Times by Caryn James
Johnny Mnemonic looks and feels like a shabby imitation of Blade Runner and Total Recall. It is a disaster in every way.
ReelViews by James Berardinelli
Johnny Mnemonic is brash, flashy, and loud, but it lacks a few key ingredients -- namely heart, soul, and intelligence.
Austin Chronicle by Marc Savlov
For his first shot at feature filmmaking, Longo does an admirable job of keeping the story line rocketing along, though his seeming attempts to out-Blade Runner Ridley Scott in the decaying cityscape department grow wearisome and the occasional wooden drivel that Reeves spouts adds a bit of unintentional humor to the proceedings.
San Francisco Chronicle by Mick LaSalle
Written by William Gibson, who adapted his own short story, and directed by New York artist Robert Longo in his feature debut, Johnny Mnemonic is inescapably a very cool movie. Running at a fevered pace, with laser and light explosions, it introduces a fantastic yet plausible vision of a computer-dominated age.
Entertainment Weekly by Owen Gleiberman
Offhand, I can’t think of an actor who could use a brain implant more. The trouble isn’t that Reeves talks like a surfer dude; it’s that he tries so hard not to talk like a surfer dude.
Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert
Johnny Mnemonic is one of the great goofy gestures of recent cinema, a movie that doesn't deserve one nanosecond of serious analysis but has a kind of idiotic grandeur that makes you almost forgive it.