Call this one "Johnny Moronic."

As if he's been taking stiff-acting lessons from Arnold Schwarzenegger, Keanu Reeves plays the title-character in "Johnny Mnemonic" (pronounced "ne-mon-ik") like he's an android.

But he's not an android. He's just a guy who occasionally plugs himself into the Internet.

Specifically, "John Smith" is a futuristic courier who has erased his personal memory banks to make room for the transportation of illegal information.

Set in 2021, the main story has Reeves accepting one last assignment so he can pay to have his memory reimplanted. But this final mission finds his brain so overloaded with information that he is soon suffering from "synapsis leakage," which will kill him if he doesn't download in 24 hours.

So, while Yakuza killers are trying to chop off his head, he races the clock to access the code needed to save his life.

Subplots and secondary characters include LoTeks, low-life rebels in the Free City of Newark who are led by Ice-T as they attempt to save the world through disinformation; a statuesque "bodyguard" (Dina Meyer), who helps Reeves and becomes a nominal love interest; a doctor (Henry Rollins) in search of a cure for an AIDS-like plague, Nerve Attenuation Syndrome (NAS); and a wild-eyed preacher who is a virtual killing machine (Dolph Lundgren).

Directed by avant-garde artist Robert Longo and written by cyberpunk novelist William Gibson, "Johnny Mnemonic" liberally steals its production design from both"Blade Runner" and "Escape From New York" and gets more than a few ideas from "Total Recall."

Unfortunately, however, most of the story ideas seem to come from B-grade horror flicks, to ensure plenty of gore — and yes, a couple of "killers-that-wouldn't-die" actually pop up at the end.

The computer-generated online scenes are sharp, especially a centerpiece sequence and the inevitable climactic race through the Internet, and some of the supporting performances are interesting.

But most of the way, this is pretty lame stuff, with weak one-liners, predictable plotting and ridiculously gory violence (which, along with profanity, accounts for the R rating).