The film, set in 2021, portrays a dystopian future racked by a tech-induced plague, awash with conspiracies, and dominated by megacorporations and organized crime.

Keanu Reeves plays Johnny, a data courier with an overloaded brain implant designed to securely store confidential information.

Takeshi Kitano portrays a yakuza affiliated with a megacorporation attempting to suppress the data; he uses his in-house psychopathic assassin played by Denis Akiyama to do so.

After they struggled for years to finance a low-budget adaptation of Gibson's story, Sony greenlit Johnny Mnemonic with a $26 million budget.

When Reeves' previous film, Speed, unexpectedly became a major hit, Sony attempted to retool Johnny Mnemonic as a blockbuster.

Described by Longo and Gibson as originally full of irony, it was edited into a mainstream action film and received negative reviews from critics.

A longer version (103 mins) of the film premiered in Japan on April 15, 1995, featuring a score by Mychael Danna and more scenes involving Kitano.

In 2022, a black-and-white edition of the film, titled Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White was released, which Gibson characterized as closer to his original vision.

Johnny is a "mnemonic courier" who discreetly transports sensitive data for corporations in a storage device implanted in his brain at the cost of his childhood memories.

Johnny initially balks when he learns the data exceeds his memory capacity even with compression, but he agrees given the large fee will cover the cost of the operation to remove the device.

As they transmit these images to the receiver in Newark, New Jersey, they are attacked and killed by yakuza led by Shinji, who wields a laser whip.

At a clinic, Spider reveals his medical charity was intended to receive the Beijing scientists' data, which is a stolen cure for NAS.

As J-Bone transmits the NAS cure information across the internet via pirate broadcasts, Johnny and Jane watch from afar as the Pharmakom headquarters goes up in flames from the public outcry.

After having been influenced by film, he transitioned to directing music videos and, when he tired of that, became interested in adapting William Gibson's Johnny Mnemonic.

[8] Longo and Gibson sought to sell Johnny Mnemonic as an art film on a small budget but failed to get financing from the studios.

[12] The unbounded spread of the Internet in the early 1990s and the consequent rapid growth of high technology culture had made cyberpunk increasingly relevant, and this was a primary motivation for Sony Pictures's decision to fund the project in the tens of millions.

NAS, also called "the black shakes", is caused by an overexposure to electromagnetic radiation from omnipresent technological devices and is presented as a raging epidemic.

[7] Prior to its release, critic Amy Harmon identified the film as an epochal moment when cyberpunk counterculture would enter the mainstream.

[13] The Johnny Mnemonic videogame, which was developed by Evolutionary Publishing, Inc. and directed by Douglas Gayeton, offered 90 minutes of full motion video storytelling and puzzles.

[30] Sony realized early on the potential for reaching their target demographic through Internet marketing, and its new-technology division promoted the film with an online scavenger hunt offering $20,000 in prizes.

[13] The film's website, the first official site launched by Columbia TriStar Interactive,[31] facilitated further cross-promotion by selling Sony Signatures-issued Johnny Mnemonic merchandise such as a "hack your own brain" T-shirt and Pharmakom coffee cups.

The website's consensus reads, "As narratively misguided as it is woefully miscast, Johnny Mnemonic brings the '90s cyberpunk thriller to inane new whoas – er, lows.

[40] McCarthy said that the film's premise is its "one bit of ingenuity", but the plot, which he called likely to disappoint Gibson's fans, is simply an excuse for "elaborate but undramatic and unexciting computer-graphics special effects".

Sending a courier to physically deliver important information while avoiding enemy agents struck him as "breathtakingly derivative" and illogical outside the artificiality of a film when the internet is available.

[36] In his review for the Los Angeles Times, Peter Rainer wrote that the film, when stripped of the cyberpunk atmosphere, is recycled from noir fiction,[41] and LaSalle viewed it more positively as "a hard-boiled action story using technology as its backdrop".

[37] Savlov wrote that Longo's "attempts to out-Blade Runner Ridley Scott in the decaying cityscape department grow wearisome".

[41] Gleiberman said that Reeves' efforts to avoid Valleyspeak backfire, giving his character's lines "an intense, misplaced urgency", though he liked the unconventional casting of Lundgren as a psychopathic street preacher.

[40] Reeves's performance in the film earned him a Golden Raspberry Award nomination for Worst Actor (also for A Walk in the Clouds), but he lost to Pauly Shore for Jury Duty.

[48] In a retrospective review from 2021, Peter Bradshaw, film critic for The Guardian, rated it 4/5 stars and wrote, "Perhaps it's quaint, but it's also watchable, and it is the kind of sci-fi that is genuinely audacious".

[52] Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Johnny Mnemonic: In Black and White on Blu-ray in the United States on August 16, 2022.