Johnny Mnemonic [1995]

[Cross-posted on the Bad Movie Night Facebook page.]

I'm pretty sure without contest that this movie had the best cast of any movie we've watched at Bad Movie Night. It features, in no particular order:

• Dolph Lundgren: the most interesting man alive
• Dina Meyer: that girl from "Starship Troopers" who was way cooler and more interesting than Denise Richards
• Takeshi Kitano: the Japanese film industry's jack of all trades
• Henry Rollins: the punk rocker, motivation speaker, and all around awesome human
• Ice-T: the only real successful rapper turned actor
• Udo Kier: the German Christopher Walken

Oh. And Keanu Reeves in the lead. Crap. I think we can assume that particular casting occurred to make sure the audience knew that it was a bad movie and not the greatest movie ever.

Reeves plays John Smith, a guy who offers up his brain space for secret files distributed by resistance groups in a dystropian cyberpunk 2021. He mostly monotones about his love of expensive things and grits his teeth a lot while things are done to his head. When transporting files from China to the Free City of Newark (I know), his brain is filed beyond capacity because the writers don't know how computer storage works and he needs to get it out or die. He ends up traveling around with an out-of-work bodyguard, Meyer, and visiting her scientist friend, Spider played by Rollins, who goes on a rant about technology destroying the world that we suspect Rollins wrote himself. Spider tells him that the files in his head contain the cure to the disease that's killing everyone and from there it's mostly running from the Yakuza boss', Kitano, hired hitman, a religious Scandinavian giant with a crucifix dagger (and a crucifixation, if you will) played by Lundgren. A resistance group leader, Ice-T, decides to help John with some tech built by Spider that involves sharing brains with a dolphin or something and the cure is unlocked and all the bad guys die. Humanity is saved!

This movie is a definite rewatch, which is to say bad movie gold.

Quotes:

"Have you got parents and stuff?"

"I WANT TO GET ONLINE. I NEED A COMPUTER." - Reeves playing every teenager

"I WANT ROOM SERVICE! I want a club sandwich. I want a cold Mexican beer. I want a ten thousand dollar a night hooker. . . and i want my shirts laundered like they do at the Imperial Hotel."

"Johnny, the dolphin can take you to the data."

"We're going out with a blast so get your VCRs ready!"

Ice-T: "Where's Spider?"

Meyer: "He's dead."

[Ice-T looks at a flaming pile of rubble nearby]

Meyer: "No. Not in there. Earlier."

Adam's Grandma's Review: "Lots of explosions."