The Keanu Reeves Project - Chain Reaction

Chain Reaction (1996) - Eddie Kasalivich

I need to do a little housekeeping before starting my latest review - 

In my last recap of “A Walk in the Clouds” I incorrectly stated that I hadn’t been giving out half points in

my scores which is why I settled on a score of 5.5.  Well after going back to some of my early entries in

this project, I was wrong, much like how I’m very frequently wrong.  I’ve given half points on numerous

occasions, so I’m going back and upping my score from a 5 to a 5.5.  This will all be VERY important

on the quiz I’ll be administering when I’m done here.

So I just watched “Chain Reaction,” a movie that could have been called something like “The Fugitive 2

- Cruise Control,” or I don’t know, “US Marshals.”

This movie so closely resembled the (much better) Harrison Ford movie “The Fugitive” that I had to do

some IMDB sleuthing to ensure that I wasn’t crazy, but I’ll get to this in a bit.

I didn’t see “Chain Reaction” when it was released in 1996 or ever until my viewing tonight.  When I

was in high school, I used to read movie reviews every Friday when they came out in the newspaper

(an actual real physical newspaper), even for movies I had no interest in seeing and I remember the

early reviews of it were really bad and I nearly immediately lost interest.  

A quick scouring of Rotten Tomatoes (where this only has 32 critics reviews, which I also find odd for a

major release like this was) will show pull-quotes like, “The film is dull and drags,” and “Plodding and

predictable, and a big disappointment.”

Here’s the thing - for all the flak it took in 1996, it’s really not that bad.  Please do not get me wrong,

“Chain Reaction” is far from a good movie, but it is also not “Johnny Mnemonic.” More than anything

else, it’s really just unnecessary and a direct knock-off of “The Fugitive,’ but with SCIENCE!

SCIENCE!

So a quick plot synopsis full of spoilers - 

Keanu Reeves plays Eddie, a machinist working in a field lab for the University of Chicago, where a

team of scientists, led by the eccentric Dr. Barkley, are trying to discover how to turn hydrogen into

energy.  Dr. Barkley is looking for a cheap, efficient energy source so he can...give it away?  Yes, so

he can give it away, even though his discovery would immediately become a trillion dollar enterprise. 

Dr. Barkley is a real iconoclast.  

This movie is very loose on the science here (which is great because it really barely matters in the long

run), but apparently the energy comes from shooting a laser at a specific frequency at a tank of liquid

hydrogen which then creates massive amounts of energy by heating the hydrogen to millions of kelvin

(which I believe is hotter than the fucking sun but again, whatever).  The problem though is that they

haven’t hit the right frequency level yet and if you shoot this tank with the wrong frequency it becomes

unstable and can explode.

The experiments are close but they are missing the right frequency in which to shoot the laser, and for

some reason Eddie (Keanu Reeves) is able to figure it out at home on his own testing setup.  Why he

has this, I don’t know.  I guess I don’t know what a machinist is or what they do in the context of a

scientific laboratory, particularly because Dr. Barkley has a team of physicists working under him on

this project, none of whom can figure it out.  

Anyway, Keanu Reeves figures it out and shows it off to the whole team at the lab where everyone

celebrates as they should because this is an absolutely groundbreaking discovery.  The whole gang is

at the celebration - Dr. Barkley, Keanu Reeves, Rachel Weisz as Lily (one of the physicists on the team)

and Tzi Ma as Dr. Lu Chen (who I recognized as the dad in “Rush Hour).”  Also there is Morgan Freeman

as Paul Shannon, who leads the foundation that funds this particular lab.

Dr. Barkley is also so thrilled with the discovery that he starts emailing everyone he knows about it instead

of, I don’t know, running to the patent office immediately and becoming the world’s first trillionaire.  Oh Dr.

Barkley, you cad.  

After a night of celebrating, Keanu returns to the lab to pick up his motorcycle (Keanu Reeves riding a

motorcycle - check!) only to discover the tanks have become unstable and on the verge of exploding,
Dr. Barkley is dead with a bag over his head, and Dr. Chen is missing.  This is no good.  Keanu escapes
and the lab explodes, taking eight city blocks of downtown Chicago with it.  Meanwhile Morgan Freeman
is writing an email to someone about the discovery and we see the words on his screen, “Possible global

implications.”  Oh, do you think so professor?  

Goodbye warehouse district

And here’s where this movie turns into a shittier version of “The Fugitive.”  Keanu and Lily get framed for the explosion, which must have killed hundreds or more people and when they see they’re being setup for it, make a run for it (I still don’t know where they think they were going) with the aid of Morgan Freeman.  

But, it turns out that Morgan Freeman is actually funded by the CIA through some program run by Brian

Cox, and the CIA was responsible for blowing up the lab. Once Keanu Reeves showed up and starting

blabbing to the FBI about seeing Barkley dead inside, the CIA then ended up being forced into framing

Keanu for it.  And much like the “science” in this movie you just have to say, “Okay, sure.”

Oh yeah, and the CIA has also apparently invested hundreds of millions of dollars into an underground

bunker to operate their own secret giant hydrogen energy facility that will only be useful if they get those

frequencies.

So while Eddie and Lily are on the run from the FBI as they are wanted terrorists, Morgan Freeman is

actually working against them and trying to help the CIA track them down because it turns out that Keanu

is the only guy that knows the right frequencies to make this thing work.  

What's the frequency, Kenneth?

Sure, whatever.

The movie turns into a man on the run at this point, or more specifically, man and woman on the run.  It is

slowly revealed to us what the CIA is actually up to and eventually even the FBI agents hunting Keanu

and Lily figure out that they’re probably not guilty of anything other than being in a mediocre movie.

God I love both the email address and the attachment extension of '.all.'  Agent Leon Ford @FB.WashingtonDC.  The movie version of the internet in the 90's is truly hilarious.

Lily is eventually kidnapped by the CIA and taken to the underground facility where we discover shock of all shocks, Lu is alive but he doesn’t know the goddamn frequencies either and only Keanu can make this thing work.  Eventually, Keanu Reeves shows up, blows up the lab, and releases the frequencies to the world at large because he too doesn’t want to be a trillionaire.  Morgan Freeman kills Brian Cox, who has apparently lost his mind over the whole mess and the movie ends.  

The only three actors who WEREN'T also in "The Fugitive." 

Saying this movie is a knock-off of “The Fugitive” would be an understatement.   “The Fugitive” made almost $200 million dollars and was the second highest grossing movie of 1993 so sure, I can understand wanting to replicate that success.  So, how do make another movie as successful as “The Fugitive?”  Well, first you hire Andrew Davis, the same director, and then you apparently hire the entire cast to be in it as well.  

The casting of this movie is in some ways identical to the “Fugitive.”  I first noticed this on the appearance

of Neil Flynn, the janitor from “Scrubs,” who I had remembered played a transit cop in “The Fugitive,”

(because I always found that funny) who shows up as...a cop in “Chain Reaction.”  But it’s not just Neal

Flynn appearing in both movies.  No, according to IMDB, no less than TWENTY ACTORS appear in both

movies!  It’s been awhile since I’ve seen “The Fugitive,” so I didn’t notice many of them aside from Neal

Flynn.  The other one that stood out to me as well was one of the convicts on Harrison Ford’s prison bus

who plays a CIA goon in this one.

Neil Flynn as soon to be dead police officer in both movies

I mean, how do you cast TWENTY OF THE SAME ACTORS in a movie that is NOT a direct sequel?  It’s fucking crazy.  And it did not magically recreate the success of “The Fugitive.” 

Apparently, even Tommy Lee Jones himself was originally cast in the Brian Cox role before being

switched out for reasons I couldn’t find.   

Aside from that little bit of trivia, the movie’s lousy reputation is not as deserved as I think it is.  If say,

“The Fugitive” did not exist, this wouldn’t be that bad of a movie but of course, if “The Fugitive” didn’t exist,
I’m pretty certain that “Chain Reaction” never would have been made in the first place.  The plot is a little
silly, the twists are a little obvious and the science is completely absurd but also secondary to anything
else going on.  That said, I was never bored or checking the time to see how much was left before it ends,
like I’ve done with several other movies in this project.  We’re not forced into a budding romance between
Keanu and Rachel Weisz, the acting is fine and the action sequences are also fine for a movie from
1995 (but wow have we come a long way since then).  

A few spare thoughts: 

I guess I’ve got some logical fallacies that really bother me about this movie.  The reason the CIA
doesn’twant this new energy source available is because they think the destruction of the oil industry
will tank the stock market and crash the global economy, which may or may not be true.  But then,
why hire Barkley to run this thing?  They know he’s been very open in his willingness to giving this new
clean energy source away for free!  Like, hire someone else!  We see that Barkley isn’t even that
brilliant - an undergraduate (they even mention this about Keanu) machinist working in the lab is the
guy to figure it out!  And what about the CIA bunker?  I mean how secret can this thing actually be? 
There are literally hundreds of construction workers on this project.

This is the second movie that features Fred Ward in a prominent role, the first being the completely

forgettable waste of time, “The Prince of Pennsylvania.”  I hope Fred Ward and Keanu Reeves became

lifelong friends after being reunited here.  

A very young Michael Shannon is in this for about one minute as a flower delivery guy.  I love Michael

Shannon and was even thinking about doing a Michael Shannon filmography whenever I’m done with

the Keanu Reeves Project.  

Michael Shannon might actually have been stoned here.

More “Fugitive” stuff - instead of a dam, there’s a drawbridge.  Instead of going in disguise as a janitor at a hospital, Keanu goes in disguise as a construction worker at the CIA lab.  Instead of a one armed man, it’s...Brian Cox.  Okay, maybe that one doesn’t fit so well.  But it goes on and on and on.

Box Office information: $21 Million/$60 Million worldwide on a $55 Million budget ($43 Million inflation

adjusted).  The 85th highest grossing movie of 1996.  I had remembered this being a bigger bomb (no

pun intended) than it actually was.  I suppose the domestic returns really weren’t great but overall it

wasn’t a loser, although I’m sure that Hollywood accounting had it losing $9 Trillion.

Rotten Tomatoes: 16% Critics, 27% Audience.  Again, these rankings feel too low to me as the movie

really isn’t that bad.

IMDB: 5.7 - this feels closer to accurate.

My Movie Rating: 5.5/10.  I’m so glad I went back and saw that I was giving half point because this feels

better than a 5 but not that much better.  If I was drunk on a Saturday night flipping channels and this was

on, I could definitely see myself watching it for 15 or 20 minutes, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it

again.

Keanu Rating: 7/10.  Once again, Keanu is perfectly acceptable in this and does a totally fine job with

what he’s working with.

Up Next: Yet another movie I know nothing about, “Feeling Minnesota.”  This could be anything but based

on the cover art it looks like another romance.  Guess I’ll know soon!

The Keanu Reeves Project - A Walk In The Clouds

A Walk in the Clouds (1995) - Paul Sutton

Sorry for the brief delay in the Keanu Reeves Project.  I've finally gotten around to watching Ozark and have been plowing through it the last several days instead of watching my Keanu movies.  And because this project is NOT about Ozark, I won't write my feelings on that particular show, because you're not here for Ozark thoughts, you're here for my posts about Keanu Reeves movies!  

I think part of the delay in the project is that after my last post on Johnny Mnemonic, a movie I loved for all the wrong reasons, I saw that the next movie up on the list was "A Walk in the Clouds," a movie I didn't know anything about but surmised was a romance with Keanu as the lead, something I didn't have optimistic feelings about.  

It's not to say I'm against romance movies or love stories.  In fact, some of my favorite movies can be classified as love stories, such as "The Last of the Mohicans," and "True Romance."  For some reason I'll never understand, I used to love "Wicker Park," a movie so stupid that if anyone had a cell phone it could have been five minutes long.

So it's not that it was a romance that turned me off before watching "A Walk in the Clouds," I think it's more of Keanu Reeves starring as a romantic lead.  I don't know, I'm just not into it.  In fact, I would say that "A Walk in the Clouds" is the first of several Keanu Reeves movies I haven't gotten to yet where he plays a lead in a romance.  Sure, there were "romance" aspects in other movies so far but no movies with a true romantic theme.  

So while I know I've got more to come like "Hardball" and "The Lake House," "A Walk in the Clouds" is the first real romance movie so far in this project.  So after plowing through the first two seasons of "Ozark," I finally got around to watching it and came away feeling a bit unjustified in my total aversion to watching it.  

So Keanu Reeves co-stars as Paul Sutton where he's just gotten back home to San Francisco after fighting in World War 2 where he returns to his wife, played by Debra Messing (in her film debut) who didn't even bother reading the letters he sent every day to her.  We can't really blame her too much as we find out they had barely known each other prior to getting married and they don't seem to have much in common or that much of an attachment to one another.  So yeah, we already know where this is going.

I'd probably marry her too if I was off to face near certain death

Paul is a chocolate salesman, a profession that apparently existed in 1945, and he immediately hits the road for....door to door chocolate sales I guess?  Anyway, he's headed up to Sacramento by train where he has a chance meeting with a young Mexican American woman named Victoria, played by Aitana Sanchez-Gijon, a woman I don't know from anything other than this movie. Victoria is headed home from graduate school to visit her very wealthy family, as they run a vineyard in Napa Valley.

After ending up stuck on the side of the road with her, Paul learns that she's gotten pregnant from one of her professors (now out of the picture) and her father is basically going to kill her when he finds out about everything.  Paul, being the genuinely nicest guy in the world with no ill intentions offers to go home with her, pretend to be her husband, and then ditch out the next day to take the fall as the world's biggest asshole so Victoria can have her father think she's kept her honor to the family.  Okay, sure, I'll buy it for the sake of this movie.  

Well, a lot of this movie is pretty formulaic from here - one day turns into several days, they fall in love, the end.

Sure, a few other things happen here and there.  Victoria's grandfather, Don Pedro (played by Anthony Quinn), imparts his old man wisdom on Paul, Victoria's father goes from hating Paul to loving Paul, and an entire orchard burns down.

Now, I have to admit something at this point.  I consider myself well versed in very few subjects.  I can barely read or write anymore as evidenced by this blog.  But one thing I am pretty knowledgable about is movies.  So I felt a little stupid not really knowing who Anthony Quinn was prior to doing a little research before writing this entry.  I knew the name but probably couldn't have named any movie he had been in.  Well, Anthony Quinn was fucking prolific in the 50's and 60's, with roles in classics (that I've also never seen) like "Zorba the Greek," and "Lawrence of Arabia."  Oh, and he also won two Oscars.  Anyway, I'm really only pointing this out because he was probably the best part of "A Walk in the Clouds," and I wish he had more screen time.

A good chunk of the movie focuses on Paul and how he becomes part of the family in a very short time, despite Victoria's father's initial (and rightful) distrust of the entire situation.  But the grandfather sees the pair falling in love even before they do and sort of tries to steer them together as well.  I really thought Anthony Quinn was excellent in this, but I guess that's what you get when you cast a two time Oscar winner.

Brandy and singing in the wine cellar with Anthony Quinn and Keanu Reeves

One thing I found a little troublesome with the movie in general was the portrayal of Victoria's family.  I'm certainly not an expert but everything about them seemed a lot more Italian than Mexican, from their accents to their music to the very odd scene where everyone mashes grapes together that looked like a cut scene from "The Godfather."  In fact, a handful of the actors that played the family had Italian heritage but anyway, what do I know?

A second aspect of the movie that I didn't care much for was that Paul has a number of flashbacks to the war through a handful of dream sequences.  His dreams change through the movie as he gets closer to Victoria and her family, but the war's affect on him is never explored or discussed so the dream sequences seem completely unnecessary and out of place.  

Overall, the movie was totally fine but unmemorable and I doubt I'll ever watch it again but am not angry that I spend an hour and a half watching it.  

A few scattered thoughts:

*I really liked Debra Messing in this as well, even though Keanu catches her cheating on him, she never really comes off as "bad" in this, which is maybe why Keanu is able to break it off with her leaving everyone happy.  I think the movie navigated their marriage in an interesting way and could have been a lot deeper if Keanu had to struggle with leaving her for Victoria.

*Maybe my next career will be door to door chocolate salesman.  Do you think we're going to still have chocolate when the dust settles on 2020?  

*Um, the Zucker Brothers produced this movie.  What.  The.  Fuck?  The Zucker Brothers.  Who made Airplane and Top Secret!  I'd kinda like to see "A Walk in the Clouds" reimagined as a spoof.

*I read Roger Ebert's review of this from 1995 and he was over-the-top effusive in his praise, giving it a full 4/4 stars.  Yo dude, this movie is NOT that good.  

Box Office Mojo: $50 Million ($104 Million adjusted) on a $20 Million budget.  The 29th highest grossing movie of 1995.  A box office success, I have no recollection of this movie being as popular as it apparently was.  It's also the 1,758th highest grossing movie of all time, so there's that.

Rotten Tomatoes: 44% Critics/75% Audience.  Interesting numbers.  I could see the critics disliking it based on how formulaic it was, but I think that number is a little low while the audience also seems a little high to me.

My Movie Rating: I wish I was giving half points because I want to give it a 5.5, but I haven't been doing that yet so I won't start now.  I'm going to round down on this to a 5, because while it was a perfectly fine movie, nothing stands out and I doubt I'll ever watch it again.

Keanu Rating: 7/10.  Again, I don't love Keanu as a romantic lead, I see him as either too silly or too John Wick for this.  But he gets the job done here and was perfectly acceptable.  

Next: The 1996 movie "Chain Reaction."  I'm a little excited because this is another one I've never seen and know very little about other than I think it's also supposed to be Johnny Mnemonic level bad.

The Keanu Reeves Project - Johnny Mnemonic

JOHNNY MNEMONIC (1995) - Johnny

I'm just going to get this out of the way on the top because I don't think I've mentioned it yet in this series:

I love bad movies.

I know, this isn't trendy anymore.  It certainly doesn't make me unique and it definitely doesn't make me cool.  But I have loved bad movies for a long, long time.  

My love of bad movies started in my sophomore year of college, when I caught the 1986 movie "Cobra" airing on TV.  As soon as Stallone mumbled out the epic line, "You are a disease, I'm the cure," I was hooked.  How had I never seen this movie before?  And how did Sylvester Stallone continue to work after it was released? 

Have you seen "Cobra?"  It's a revelation.  It might be the best bad movie ever made.

In short, Stallone, as the titular renegade cop "Cobra," is barely able to mumble out his lines as he hunts a gigantic criminal gang responsible for a slew of murders in the city despite the other cops thinking it's just one serial killer and not, you know, hundreds of people.  The writing is terrible, the acting is worse, the plot holes are infinite and at the end of the day, "Cobra" is simply an awesomely terrible movie that I would be happy to watch on an infinite loop until the end of time.  

Mumble mumble mumble mumble

I hosted my very first ever "Bad Movie Marathon"  in my friend's dorm room shortly after my accidental viewing of "Cobra."  A group of about a dozen of my friends watched it along with several other godawful movies, like "Drop Dead Fred," which is apparently a very controversial movie even though there really is no debate - it's terrible.  Come at me.

The first ever Bad Movie Marathon was a gigantic success (if you call a dozen people sitting around a college dorm room making fun of old, bad movies a success) and I went on to host 15 or 20 more bad movie marathons since then.  We've watched some really hilariously bad movies like "Cool as Ice," "Road House," and "Stone Cold" from the latest quarantined marathon a few weeks ago.  

But we've also watched some really terrible movies that have absolutely no entertainment value or redeeming qualities that nearly cost me a handful of friendships like "Spice World," "Birdemic," and "Jack Frost 2."  I certainly know the difference between a "good" bad movie and a movie that has no entertainment value whatsoever, unintentionally comedic or otherwise.

NEVER watch this movie.

Over time, I realized that loving bad movies was a bit of a hobby for a much larger group of people that extended far beyond my friend group.  Podcasts like the incredibly popular "How Did This Get Made?" and "We Hate Movies," (who previously covered Johnny Mnemonic) started to crop up, along with countless others that don't have the name recognition or popularity.  In fact, several Youtube channels discussing and reviewing bad movies have become immensely popular and I've realized that there's a significantly larger community of bad movie lovers exists nationwide.  

I don't get mad when I'm forced to sit through a bad movie, so long as it's entertaining.  Hell, I'm the guy that actively sits through old Lifetime movies in search of unintentional comedic value.  So far during this project, I've certainly sat through some BAD movies but none of which had the comedic value I want in a bad movie.  There's a big difference between just plain bad or boring and awesomely bad.  There was nothing funny about "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues" or "Bram Stoker's Dracula."  "Little Buddha," and "My Own Private Idaho" were just really fucking boring.  So far, there really haven't been any "good" bad movies in my journey through Keanu Reeves filmography. 

Which leads me to today's movie: Johnny Mnemonic.

And wow.  I LOVED this movie.  And certainly not because it was good.

I went into this one with almost no knowledge other than that it was supposed to be "bad." And boy did it not disappoint.  

Thankfully, "Johnny Mnemonic" is not just bad but it is hilariously terrible and I'm going to come out of this one with a strong recommendation to bad movie lovers around the world.

What I really loved about "Johnny Mnemonic" is that it starts bad and stays bad throughout.  There were multiple times where I laughed out loud at how ridiculous it was, whether it was something from the storyline or the acting or the constant scenes of what "the internet" had turned into in the year 2021.  

The movie opens up with one of the longest scrolls I can ever remember seeing in any movie.  One of my general rules of thumb is that the longer an opening scroll or intro narration the worse the movie is.  You shouldn't have to give me three minutes of background in order to understand what is happening in your movie.  There are of course exceptions to this rule, "Star Wars" comes to mind immediately but the scroll in Johnny Mnemonic opens the movie and lasts for an eternity.

It goes

On and on....

And on and on...

And on...and on...and on...

We learn that it's the year 2021 and the corporations rule everything and there's a new pandemic affecting society.  I mean, it's completely preposterous...

Okay, but aside from the fact that part was totally accurate, there are other key pieces of information we learn heading into the movie.  For example, the Yakuza are basically the hired thugs of big corporations and data carrying couriers called Mnemonics are trusted to transmit important information that's held in hard drives in their brains.   
Sure.

So, here's a quick synopsis of the plot:

Keanu Reeves plays Johnny (no last name), a mnemonic courier who is hired for one last mission so he can finally earn enough money to restore the childhood memories he has lost over time due to all the other data stored in his head.  He takes a very dangerous mission to deliver 320GB of data stored in his head (despite his maximum capacity of 160GB) to an unknown person in the "Free City" of Newark, New Jersey. The data ends up being the cure to the NAS epidemic and as such, Keanu is chased by the Yakuza, by the original owner of the data, Pharmacom, and by a hired bounty hunter known as the Street Preacher in an absolutely bananas performance of Dolph Lundgren.

Yakuza baddie.  This guy is over-the-top hilariously bad.

And yes, it's funny that he's only carrying 320GB of data but I'll give the movie a pass for that.  Back in 1995, 320GB was probably the biggest number they could think of.  I don't even know if the word "terabyte" existed then.

The bigger question is why in this future society there isn't a more secure way of transmitting "large" amounts of data without a human courier.  I mean, these guys never heard of an FTP?  It seems a bit absurd to think that in this future society the most secure way to transmit data would be through a human carrier, particularly when there's a pandemic as well as the Yakuza killing everyone on behalf of big corporations.  

Meanwhile, a slew of recognizable faces show up throughout to either help or impede our hero:

Hey, here's Henry Rollins as "Spider," a "brain mechanic" who specializes in body modifications.  Spider gets annoyed when he meets Johnny and learns that Johnny doesn't have a last name.  Dude, your name is Spider, you don't have a foot to stand on here.  

CAUSE I'M A LIAR

Hey, here's Dina Meyer as Jane, an aging (?) bodyguard who also suffers from NAS who is hired by Keanu to help him make his delivery.

Hey, here's Udo Kier as Ralphie, Johnny's special agent who gets him missions and also turns on him early in the film.  For those keeping track, this makes the THIRD movie so far that Udo Kier has shown up in.  I had previously referred to him as the weird German guy from the Van Sant movies, but now I know better that he's actually pretty prolific.

"Oh, hello Johnny."

Wait, look over there!  Is that....Ice T as J-Bone?  It sure is!  He's the leader of the rebel force, the Low-Teks, who basically look like they fell off the back of a truck full of extras from "Mad Max."  He's got an anarchy symbol tattoo on his face and much like the rest of the low-teks, lines drawn through the rest of him.  

"Hey Johnny, do you know the benefits of Car Shield?"

And is that....could it be....is that fucking legendary actor of Japanese action movies Takeshi Kitano AKA Beat Takeshi as the head of Pharmacom?  What the fuck are you doing in this movie?

That you're in the wrong movie

There are simply too many absurd things in this movie to describe them all, so how about a quick smattering of some of my favorites?

First and foremost, EVERYONE in this movie is terrible, Keanu Reeves included.  It's almost as if the entire cast had their brains implanted with a "forget how to act" system update.  Even Beat Takeshi, who is a goddamn legend is TERRIBLE in this.  But, it's not entirely their fault as the writing in this is really, really bad.  I know I might not be one to talk given the quality of this blog but this movie has dialogue like "I want you to do something for me."  "Do?" "Say bye."

Beat Takeshi in Takeshi's Castle AKA MXC.  Better than Johnny Mnemonic

There is so much "future speak" gobbledy gook in this movie that I lost track.  Apparently, all of the technology is what caused the NAS epidemic in nearly half the population.  Sounds a bit like the 5G conspiracy theories to me....

One of my favorite scenes is when Johnny and Jane break into a computer store, which is actually called "Crazy Bob's Computer Shop," and Johnny has to "hack" into the internet, which really is a series of tubes.

Here are some of the items he needs in order to do this:

*A Sino Logic 60, 

*A pair of SoGo 7 Data Gloves

*A GPL Stealth Module

*A Thompson Eye Phone (no, not an iPhone, this movie did not predict nearly anything)

Even stupider than this looks

There are multiple scenes of Johnny inside of the Internet, which really just looks like very bad 90's CGI reminiscent of "The Lawnmower Man," including a far too long final sequence where he's battling a computer virus....

Oh, and about NAS...

NAS is this virus going around that's affecting nearly half the population but as far as we can see, NAS really just causes people to have vaguely annoying tremors (called the "black shakes") every once in a while.  It doesn't even seem that debilitating.  

Dolph Lundgren is FUCKING HILARIOUS as the Street Preacher, a hired mercenary to help stop Johnny even though the entire Yakuza is already after him.  Dolph Lundgren utters out a handful of lines like "Come to Jesus," while trying to kill everyone in his path.  

Cyber Jesus

And it would be a shame if I didn't mention the single worst monologue in any movie from this project so far.  You just need to watch this for yourself.  If I ever start acting again, this is what I'm showing up in auditions to perform.  

And lastly, near the end of the movie we find out that all of humanity's hopes rely on...wait for it...a cybernetic dolphin.  I wish I was joking.

Jones - the psychic cybernetic dolphin here to save humanity

This movie is fucking terrible in all of the best ways.  I can't recommend it more.

Just a few quick side notes:

*This was directed by Robert Longo, his first and LAST feature film.  Yes, Johnny Mnemonic appears to have killed this man's career.

*I don't know how much more Udo Kier I can take.  Why does he keep showing up?

*Apparently Keanu Reeves turned down Val Kilmer's role in "Heat" to star in "Johnny Mnemonic."  Whoops.

*It's shocking to me that after starring in this absolute dud of a movie that Keanu Reeves was not only offered but accepted the role of Neo in "The Matrix" only four years later.  Clearly, the quality of these two movies is enormous and it's crazy to think that they were made less than five years apart from one another.  

Box Office Mojo Information: $19 million  on a $40 million budget (inflation adjusted to $39.8 Million).  Yikes.  Somehow still the 86th highest grossing movie of 1995.

Rotten Tomatoes: 13% Critics, 31% Audience - This sounds about right.  I have to imagine those positive audience scores are ironic.

IMDB: 5.7 - this is far too high.

My Movie Rating: This is tough.  From an honest standpoint this gets a 2/10.  It's atrocious.  I mean, I can't express enough how bad this movie is.  However, from a bad movie perspective it gets a full 10/10.  Highly entertaining, would absolutely watch again as a Bad Movie Marathon choice.  

Keanu Rating: 1/10.  Did you watch that monologue I embedded above?  He's just so bad in this, but so is everyone else.  I don't know how much fault is his, the writing is abysmal.  I'm surprised this only killed the director's career.

Up next: The 1995 movie "A Walk in the Clouds."  I don't know what this is but it sounds like a romance movie.  I'm going in with an open mind.

The Keanu Reeves Project - Speed

SPEED (1994) - Jack Traven

Well buckle up, strap in, hold on tight, and get ready for the thrill-ride that is the 1994 action thriller, "Speed."

This is one of the Keanu movies I've been looking forward to rewatching since I started this project.  It's not like I haven't seen "Speed" many times over - of course I have, I'm not a complete asshole.  But "Speed" is one of these movies that I've probably only watched in its entirety from start to finish a handful of times, including its original theater run in 1994.  However, it is on TV with such frequency, or at least it used to be that I've certainly caught it in 30 minute clips dozens of times or more.  For as many times as I've seen it in drips and drabs and as big a fan of Keanu Reeves as I am, I'm actually a little surprised that I don't even own this movie in some format or another.

By 1994, Keanu Reeves was arguably a movie star if not a mega-star.  He had been involved in a small handful of huge hit movies, but only one action movie to this point as Johnny Utah in "Point Break," and I would argue that his performance as Jack Traven in "Speed" launched him in to that category of superstardom.

"Speed" did huge box office numbers and became a part of the American lexicon, at least for a short while, including two clips from two of my favorite shows from the 90s that referenced the movie:

If you are an adult over the age of 20, there can't really be a way that you don't know "Speed," a movie with a relatively simple premise that is executed in a spectacular fashion - a mad bomber (Dennis Hopper) rigs a bus to explode if it slows to under 50 miles an hour and only one man can save the day - our hero Keanu Reeves as Jack Traven.

While I don't generally like to use these posts to share random trivia and facts for these movies, I did read two interesting tidbits that I wanted to share:

First, Keanu Reeves was far from the first choice to play Jack.  The top choice?  Inexplicably, it was Stephen Baldwin.  For the life of me, I cannot understand how this was any sort of logical choice.  Apparently, the argument was that Keanu Reeves was not a big enough star....and Stephen Baldwin was?  I mean, I guess who could forget him as Jimmy Teeters in the 1993 movie, "Posse," or his epic performance as Travis Graham in "Bitter Harvest," or as Stuart in "Threesome?"  I'm of course joking because nobody remembers any of these movies.

Nope.

Second, in the original script, the bus was rigged to explode if its speed dropped below....20 miles an hour.  I can't imagine how that could have been thrilling in any sort of way.  They could have stayed in a parking lot the entire time.  Thrilling. 

Not only did "Speed" launch Keanu Reeves to superstardom, but the same can also be said for Sandra Bullock, who was the one of the only actors who went on to star in the oft-panned sequel, "Speed 2: Cruise Control," a movie I'm thankful that I don't need to watch for this project. 

I think part of what makes "Speed" such a classic movie is because the stakes are high and director Jan de Bont truly keeps his foot on the gas (pun intended) for the entire duration of the film.  On my rewatch for this project it really dawned on me that there is a good 50-60 minutes where the audience is forced to hold their collective breath while the bus speeds through the highways of Los Angeles, avoiding several close calls including the epically famous "bus jump" sequence.

Of course, it's a movie and so we ultimately know that the bus isn't going to explode, at least not with our heroes (and most of the extras) still on board.  Which is why it's always been a dream of mine to remake a movie like this but have the bus explode and kill everyone on board in say, minute 20.  Then the rest of the movie would be about Keanu Reeves' family dealing with his untimely death.  It would be the ultimate fake-out.  We'd cut the trailer to look like a thrilling action/adventure, but the movie would really just end up being a serious melodrama about one family's grieving process.

Audiences would hate it.

It's the same reason I want to make a shot for shot remake of one of my favorite movies, "The Karate Kid" except when Daniel gets to the tournament he gets knocked out immediately after "You're the Best" kicks in.  The record scratches, the music gets cut-off, Daniel loses and Johnny wins the tournament.  Allie dumps Daniel and gets back with Jonny and Mr. Miyagi has a heart attack and dies.

I think it would be hilarious.

Because I love "Speed," and because it is probably one of Keanu Reeves' most famous movies I'm not going to bother with much more of a recap of this.  If you haven't watched it from start to finish, do yourself a favor and go do that.  Rather than a recap, I just want to point out a few holes in logic I noticed in my recent viewing that certainly don't take away from the movie being anything other than awesome.

In the beginning of the movie, Jack and Harry (Jeff Daniels) foil Howard's (Dennis Hopper) elevator ransom plan and Howard ostensibly blows himself up in the parking garage, leaving the cops to assume he's dead.  But when someone explodes in a confined space like that, shouldn't there have been some blood and body parts strewn around?  Shouldn't the cops have been able to figure out that the bomber wasn't dead?

Dennis Hopper mentions that it took him two years to setup the elevator job that opens the movie and after foiling this plot both Jack and Harry are given medals in a televised show within what I assume can only be a matter of days or weeks.  Yet, Dennis Hopper is able to setup the bus job almost immediately.  Either he wasted a shitload of time on the elevator plan or he learned a whole lot from that plan in order to devise the next one.  Sure, I'll just go with the latter. 

Also, where's the traffic?  I feel like I am always hearing about how bad traffic in LA is.  This is kind of addressed when they get on a newly built and unused highway, but what about all the traffic up until that point?  This takes place during morning rush hour on a workday.  Maybe that's why the initial script called for 20 miles an hour. 

8:00 rush hour

Speaking of the day and time, we see Dennis Hopper on multiple occasions with an array of televisions, mostly on news stations.  However, he has one TV set up on a football game.  What football game is he watching at 8:30 in the morning on a Tuesday?  I suppose it could be a recording on a VHS tape but....why?

But let's forget about all this because at the end of the day, who cares?  "Speed" is awesome, plot holes and logic be damned.

A few quick things to note:

*Apparently the opening elevator sequence was inspired by director Jan de Bont's own experience being trapped on a stuck elevator on the 40th floor while filming "Die Hard."  That's pretty terrifying.  I also got trapped in an elevator once about 18 months ago, and even though my elevator was only about two feet off the ground floor, it was still a pretty scary experience for 45 minutes.  Unfortunately, I was saved by a big, fat guy from Otis elevator and not by Keanu Reeves.

*Keanu Reeves did most of his own stunts for this movie, which he has gone on to do for many of his other actions movies.  Just further proves that Keanu Reeves is awesome.

*This marks Keanu's second movie also featuring Dennis Hopper, the first being "River's Edge."  Dennis Hopper is noticeably better in "Speed," and makes a pretty fun villain in this.

*I am probably wrong, but I think one of the cast members of the current season of 90 Day Fiance was an extra in this.  If you are unfamiliar, Yolanda is a 50 something year old woman who is the 'victim' of a very obvious, and very blatant romance catfish by a Nigerian guy claiming to be a hunky British 30 year old.

Oh Yolanda, you sad, sad woman

"In my heart, I know that Williams is not a bus bomber."

Box Office Mojo Information: $121 million domestic ($270 million inflation adjusted), $161 million international on a $30 million budget.  The 7th highest grossing movie of 1994, the 547th highest grossing movie of all time and the 93rd highest grossing R rated movie.

Rotten Tomatoes: 94% Critics, 76% Audience - I'm actually a little surprised that these numbers are not inversed and that critics liked this that much more than the audience, not that either of those scores are low.  For the record, "Speed 2" has a 4% critics score, marking a 90% difference which has to be one of the biggest sequel disparities on record.  

IMDB: 7.2

My Movie Rating: 9/10.  I really don't watch a lot of action movies but when I do, there's a good chance Keanu Reeves is involved.  "Speed" is absolutely one of my favorite all time action movies, it still makes me hold my breath even if I know exactly what's going to happen.

Keanu Rating: 8/10.  It's sort of funny to read that he wasn't considered a big enough star to pull this off during the original casting conversations.  

Up next: the 1995 movie, "Johnny Mnemonic," a cyberpunk movie that probably has some laughably bad visions for the future.  I've never seen it and have heard it's pretty terrible so I guess we'll see.  

The Keanu Reeves Project - Little Buddha

LITTLE BUDDHA (1993) - Siddhartha

It looks like I'm about to hit a bit of a rough patch here in the career of Keanu Reeves as I journey into the mid 90's.  In fact, up until I hit "The Matrix" several movies from now, I have a lot that I am NOT looking forward to, including today's entry, "Little Buddha."

If there's been one overarching feeling I've had so far sitting through Keanu's list of movies that I have not seen before it would be boredom.  I felt this way during "My Own Private Idaho," "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues," "Dracula," and "The Prince of Pennsylvania."  My feeling of wanting to shoot myself in the face during "Babes in Toyland" might be a cousin to boredom as well.

My recent viewing of "Little Buddha" continued my trend of boring movies I hadn't seen before, making me realize that hey, maybe there's a REASON I have never seen some of these movies.  And the reason is that they suck.  Boredom is the main reason it took me three sittings to get through all of the nearly two and a half hour slog that was this movie.  

I went into "Little Buddha" knowing near nothing about it so it came to me as quite a shock that Keanu Reeves is playing....Siddhartha AKA Buddha, who is, you know, a guy from ancient India.  You may or may not know this but Keanu's ethnic heritage is a mixture of a number of things but one of the things he namely is NOT is Indian, or anything resembling Indian.  So, his casting in this role is just a tiny bit baffling to me.  Maybe there were no Indian actors working in Hollywood in 1994?  After all, "Little Buddha" is just a few years removed from Fisher Stevens playing an Indian guy in both Short Circuit 1 and 2.

Just a reminder that yeah, this is a thing that happened.

"Little Buddha" takes place halfway in the present and halfway in the past.  The present storyline is about a group of Tibetan monks searching for the reincarnation of one of their teachers, which leads them to find a little boy in Seattle who they think is a prime candidate.  They eventually convince his parents (played by Bridget Fonda and Chris Isaak, who I will get to momentarily) to allow the child to go to Nepal for further examination to see if he is in fact who they think he is.  

The other storyline is the one that features Keanu Reeves and tells the story of the Buddha and how he came to be.  This part of the movie was slightly more interesting to me, particularly because I know very little about the origins of Buddhism.  Of course, this is a movie and without doing further research necessary, I have no idea if what I watched on screen is the actual mythology or not.  

He'll be out protesting for a haircut soon with the rest of the COVIDiots

Some of the performances in "Little Buddha" are downright bad.  Bridget Fonda is fine in her limited screen time, but the little kid is insufferably terrible, and I hate to say it but Keanu Reeves kind of stinks, although he was obviously horribly miscast in this role.

With that said, the single worst performance of the movie and possibly second worst performance in this entire project so far goes to Chris Isaak who gives the stiffest, most wooden performance I've seen in this project so far next to the emergency room doctor from my last recap of "Even Cowgirls Get the Blues."

My impression of Chris Isaak in "Little Buddha."

After watching "Little Buddha," I read a small handful of critic reviews to see if there was something I was missing since I didn't find this to be particularly enjoyable.  Critics seemed to really appreciate the art direction and cinematography but I just couldn't get past the constant use of color filters which started to drive me crazy about halfway through.

BLUE filter!

RED filter!

ORANGE filter!

No real side notes on this one other than to say that I have no need to see this ever again.

Box Office Mojo Information: $4.7 million domestic ($10.7 million inflation adjusted) / $3 million worldwide on a 35 MILLION DOLLAR BUDGET, HOLY SHIT ARE YOU KIDDING ME?   153rd highest grossest movie of 1993.  How the hell did this movie cost $35 million to make?  Wow.  

Rotten Tomatoes: 68% Critics, 53% Audience.  This seems about right but based on it being a gigantic flop I'm a little surprised these numbers aren't lower.  

IMDB: 6.1

My Movie Rating: 4/10.  To repeat, I was mostly bored throughout and if it weren't for the saving grace of some of the origination story I'd be giving this a 3.  

Keanu Rating: 3/10.  He is miscast, he may or may not be trying to do an Indian accent at points, and he really never should have been in this in the first place.  This is not entirely his fault.

Up next: the 1994 movie, "Speed."  Fuck.  Yes.  This is the last movie before I hit a real dead zone of movies I'm not excited about.