Oh my goodness! My wife and I went to see Virtuosity around 3 in the afternoon a week after release. There was only one other couple in the theater (interested in each other, and not the film)… which was good, because we couldn’t stop laughing. I loved Lawnmower Man, really wanted JM to work… but Virtuosity was something else. Good memories. 
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I would dearly love a Sprawl trilogy of movies.
And the best way to watch Johnny Mnemonic is with a classroom full of confused teenagers. 
Kill Bill Vol. 2? <runs away, zig-zagging, just in case>
Vol 2? I think of that as a Spaghetti Western.
I am basically a know-nothing when it comes to film, but weren’t Spaghetti Westerns born of Sergio Leone adapting Samurai movies into westerns?
And lots of samurai movies were inspired by early westerns.
Around and around we go… 
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A Fistful of Dollars (first in the “man with no name” trilogy which includes The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly) is a direct copy of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. Earlier, though, the huge Hollywood film The Magnificent Seven was a remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai. Star Wars was also originally hugely influenced by Kurosawa samurai films, with some elements more-or-less directly reused.
And then like @daneel said, many samurai films were influenced by westerns. In fact Akira Kurosawa practically worshipped John Ford, and Ford’s films (some of the best westerns ever made) were the biggest influence on Kurosawa’s. I could be misremembering but Kurosawa might have loosely based the character of Yojimbo (played by Toshiro Mifune) on John Wayne’s character from Stagecoach (directed by Ford).
So coming up on Quentin Tarantino, he certainly takes his own interesting spin on these things, and while he “homages” things rather opaquely (on purpose), he’s part of a long tradition of trading and copying ideas. I did think Kill Bill Vol. 2 was quite good and it does play out like some samurai films in many ways, the revenge theme is very much more of a spaghetti western thing but revenge as a primary motivator is far from unknown in samurai cinema and in fact Lone Wolf and Cub I believe was a primary influence on the Kill Bill movies.
Lots of interesting stuff here if you’re not familiar, but Kurosawa is definitely the place to start. Everything else is rather pulpy. Although if you liked Kill Bill then maybe you’d like the pulpy stuff!
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Of all the films shot in Montreal, JM is the one in which I find it the most recognizable. It would probably be pretty easy to head right to the Jacques-Cartier bridge and re-enact the Room Service rant if you wanted to. Not so much dropping the flaming Beetle.
I do need to watch Get Smart a second time one of these days, though.
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Maybe we could get a Johnny Mnemonic reboot closer to the short story as a short film prequel to test the waters for a Sprawl Trilogy of movies. You just have to cast a solid Molly to start. I’m thinking Hollywood would have cast a 2000’s Angelina Jolie in the role if they’d had their preferred casting.
Edit: And Cyborg 2 doesn’t count…
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See also:
And
I do not think I will ever have the inclination to see it again, and have criticisms about Keanu Reeves acting, in general… though it is not entirely apart from other actors and actresses who rely on “star quality” charisma as opposed to methodology… and, there are a number of his films which shine out as some of my favorites, though I like at least to think this is because of the plot and script: the Matrix and Constantine, namely. (The later, though in many ways a rough bridge from Hellraiser novels, is one of the few cultural references which most people I associate with agree on as an invaluably useful lexicon… though now much eclipsed by such cinematic lexicons as Supernatural.)
For me, this movie, Johnny Mnemonic, was interesting from largely singular vantage points: the concept of being wanted and having dangerous and powerful information inside one’s self which one’s own self does not actually have access to.
The concept of that information dangerously leaking out and potentially damaging and/or killing the person with it.
One watered down, translated way of putting that is it kind of pokes at the human condition and how our “unconscious mind” might have many things within it that are potentially dangerous… but which we our own selves, our conscious selves, are unaware of. And as those things might start to leak out, one becomes, for instance, perhaps, something like a dangerous artists who raises uncomfortable but understandably dangerous and true statements in society.
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Really don’t see the resemblance between those two characters. I’ve heard that Yojimbo was greatly inspired by Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest.
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That story is pretty much the template for Yojimbo and Fist Full of Dollars thereafter …
This movie is a classic popcorn movie. I love it because I can get up, go to the toilet, come back and not miss much. But it’s just sit down, chew the popcorn (And have a beer) and enjoy it. It’s like a cheesy game of ShadowRun being played before you. I LOVED the garrot. That is how I forever imagined Monofilament wire there-after.
But then, I love things like cheesy kungfu movies (You killed my master. I must get revenge, but your style of kung fu is too strong!). So… That’s how I see this movie. It’s cheesy “Master too strong, get stronger, REVENGE” movie style.
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Yes they were but no one I know in Japan who either saw those movies in their era or afterwards accepted Takeshi’s movie as homage. In fact one guy I know has sworn revenge on Takeshi for that movie. The guy in question is a bit messed up in the head so I wouldn’t put it past him to act on that vow someday…
If I sound bitter its because I am. I want to like local movies, I really do but the only two local movies I’ve seen in theaters since I moved here in 97 that did anything for me were ones starring actors/actresses who made their names in the 60s & 70s and now that generation is pretty much gone. I guess the problem is I don’t like kids movies, giant robots, cartoons or maudlin melodramas and thats pretty much all that shows here any more.
I really enjoyed his American film, “Brother”, because the main character’s reactions to situations was so weird to my Western eyes. The way that he gets pissed off with another character for saving his life had me scratching my head. “Violent Cop” was fun too and I liked the tap dance number at the end of Zatoichi.
I don’t like kids movies, giant robots, cartoons or maudlin melodramas
Where would you put Takashi Miike? I don’t think Audition falls under any of those categories… 
I’m not sure what Reds has to do with it. The revolutionaries in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress were libertarians, albeit of a less obnoxious type than Randoids, not Bolsheviks as in Reds.
They also tended to be didactically literal, with the best sense of humor owned by a computer.
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I want that cold Mexican clubbing hooker in a $10,000 laundered shirt from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo!
