Johnny Mnemonic

Johnny Mnemonic (1995) is a cyberpunk action film directed by Robert Longo — watch it online on iFILM. Keanu Reeves plays a data courier who carries encrypted cargo inside a neural implant in his own skull, ferrying secrets too sensitive for any network.

The job that goes wrong loads in twice the safe capacity. Johnny has roughly 24 hours to offload it before the data pressure kills him. While the Yakuza and a hired preacher — Dolph Lundgren, unhinged — close in, he teams up with street fighter Jane (Dina Meyer), hacker leader J-Bone played by Ice-T, and a Tokyo crime boss brought to life by Takeshi Kitano.

William Gibson adapted the script from his own 1981 short story, one of the founding texts of the cyberpunk genre. The film was a US-Canada production shot in Toronto. It flopped theatrically and got savaged by critics, but time has been kinder to it — the ideas about data as commodity, corporations controlling medicine, and an underground resistance fighting for access feel less like sci-fi now. Stream Johnny Mnemonic online on iFILM.