Keanu Reeves: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

And 5 That Sucked...

5. Johnny - Johnny Mnemonic (1995)

Keanu Reeves has had a love-hate relationship with science fiction throughout his long career. Aside from his contributions to The Matrix, his performance in A Scanner Darkly brought him a fair amount of acclaim. But the genre has also been less kind to him on numerous occasions, the first being Johnny Mnemonic, the first and so far only feature film by music video director Robert Longo. Based very loosely on the short story by William Gibson, Johnny Mnemonic stars Reeves as the title character, a "mnemonic carrier" with a data storage device in his head for transporting valuable information which is too sensitive for the Net. Seeking to regain his childhood memories, which having the device impairs, Johnny takes one last job from his handler Ralfi. But the information he carries is highly valuable to two different parties, who will stop at nothing to get hold of it... While the influence of Gibson's story can still be seen in sci-fi (most recently in Elysium), Johnny Mnemonic is at best ordinary and at worst rather risible. Gibson expressed regret that the film had taken such a mainstream approach to his quirky little story, and sure enough Longo is not that capable a director, being far more at home with pop videos than complex storytelling. But even with these mitigating factors, Reeves fails to acquit himself; his performance is listless, dull and unsympathetic in a manner which doesn't endear him to the audience or enhance the story.