Johnny Mnemonic rocks (NP)

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

I really don't understand why JM wasn't more widely appreciated.  

the lone IMDB comment has this "JM is like Blade Runner's fat, slutty sister"

That's so wrong!  Just a few of the great things about it: 

1) corporate copyright-patent enforced to the detriment of the populace
2) corporation's ideals embodied in the AI of its founder (the lady yelling "Takahashi" - didn't anybody else get goosebumps from that?) which the caretaker management suppresses while involving itself ever more heavily with Yakuza and acting in disobedience to Drucker's principles of management (organizations that exist to supply a service people need will prosper; organizations that exist only to accumulate profit will not)
3) reversal of traditional sex roles - walking wounded macho lady bodyguard, bursting thru the ceiling to protect Johnny in his vulnerable state  
4) the big idea: information overload and how to handle it (open source over secrecy, worldwide collaboration) -- contained in the little idea (too much info in the courier's wetware)
5) an intro to the living network idea that blossomed in Neuromancer
6) man and dolphin co-operating
7) the amok preacher as embodiment of the worst crusading Christian right (all smite, no mercy)
8) eye-pleasers at every turn: Henry Rollins describing NAS; Ice-T's  wardrobe; Keanu's mid-air fight scene ("without the head, You're Fucked!"); great locations (I want to stay in that Tokyo hotel sometime); the fishtank and the TV-bank; data gloves...

I suppose I ought to shut up before I get started on "Fifth Element"...("Lilu Dallas multipass") but at least somebody on IMDB did it justice:

"I call the man supremely civilized whose idea of science fiction springs from Flash Gordon by way of The Magic Christian. Maslin of the New York Times inexplicably considers Besson "his nation's worst nightmare," and Ebert on the whole agrees that this is a terrible infant. On the contrary, The Fifth Element is a first and necessary work to regenerate the fled quintessence in Star Wars, namely art."