SOURCE: Dargis, Manohla. “Cyber Johnny.” Sight and Sound 5, no. 7 (July 1995): 6-7.

In the following review, Dargis discusses Gibson's involvement in the production of Johnny Mnemonic, a film adaptation of his short story.

Nothing being staler than tomorrow's news, imagining a credible future is sensationally hard. Godard did it with a poverty of means in Alphaville; Kubrick, with more cash, made it happen twice. For Johnny Mnemonic, artist Robert Longo's feature film debut, the future is where couriers dump childhood memories to upload for hire. Loosely based on an early short story by cyberpunk SF novelist William Gibson, who also wrote the screenplay, it stars Keanu Reeves as the titular blank slate, dressing like one of Sinatra's Rat Pack and delivering compound data like so much fast food.

When Johnny takes a job that literally threatens to blow his mind (he's taken one byte too many), it isn't long...