Johnny Virus (2005) User Reviews

Weak 1950s style mob nonsense

[mjs1234 · 2/10 · 25 August 2006]

Possible slight spoilers...although there isn't much to spoil.

This film is basically just poor. The script is dull. The story and main premise is pretty silly. The acting is bad. The dialogue is stiff and unbelievable. The first 1/3 of the film is taken up with a torture scene (interupted with a few flashbacks) conducted with all the menace and terror of six year girl with ribbons in her hair. Most of the characters seem to divide their time fairly equally between telling each other to shut up, smoking, or laughing inappropriately. There is a noir style gravelly voice over which is annoying rather than informative. The twist in the story is bad they decided to do it twice. Making what was a silly idea frankly ridiculous. The films over 90 minutes long and nothing much really happens, just lots of bad dialogue.

I cannot think of anything good to say about it.

Hopefully not infectious...

[tim-1368 · 2/10 · 25 August 2006]

It took me some time to engage enough to work out which of the performers was indeed the eponymous character, by the time I had however the lack of tension or purpose in any of the scenes made me want to eat my own shoes rather than watch anymore. The "gangsters" were about as terrifying as a muzzled and sedated Chiwawa and the plot dull and eye gougingly predictable enough to be a passable stand in for any bureaucrat. There seemed to me to be an awful lot of scenes where people were just standing about waiting for something to happen which invariably was not worth the wait.

This film is attempting to prop up the Sin City, graphic novel, genre with the same type of voice-over, style of dress, use of shadows and four swear words per line of dialogue etc. but it falls some way short. I'm also wondering if this film is sponsored by some tobacco manufacturer as all the characters seem to be smoking all the time.

The obviously small budget is a mitigating factor and if the whole film had been like the title sequence it could have been quite good but I'd still classify this film as Ed Wood poor without the kitsch value.

Not at all what I expected....

[innocuous · 3/10 · 5 April 2010]

This is basically a six-character play that takes place on two sets and one location. As others have said, it has a bad case of "Sin City" envy. I don't mind the lack of originality so much, but it's just plain boring. The interrogation/torture scenes have no intensity and the final scenes wherein everything is resolved have no tension. The title character basically has nothing to do in the movie. (It's as if Shakespeare had named his play about the prince of Denmark, "Guildenstern.") Also, while I can appreciate that times are tough, independent film-makers really need to get away from using animated (I won't even dignify them by calling them CGI) gunshots. The only thing that was lacking was a big "BAM!" in block letters, like in the Batman TV series. If you don't have the money to actually fire a gun on camera, don't bother. Definitely not worth your while. (And why the hell is he called "Johnny Virus"? That makes no sense whatsoever.)

There's no cure for this Virus

[MBunge · 3/10 · 23 March 2011]

Well…I suppose you have to give these filmmakers credit for imagination. I'm not sure anyone else has ever thought about stitching together a lame episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents with a terrible episode of Tales From The Darkside and a horrible episode of The Sopranos. Of course, watching Johnny Virus demonstrates that no one ever should have thought of such a thing.

In some ill defined era of the Chicago underworld, a crime boss is killed. His daughter Franziska (Patricia Heller) and her right hand man Giusseppi (Richard V. Licata) suspect an inside job. So they hire an "extractor" out of Milwaukee named Walt (Gregory Scott Cummins) to torture a confession out of suspected murder Johnny Virus (Mark Kiely). So the first section of the film is Walt working over Johnny in what can only be described as the anti-Saw of torture stories. This has to be one of the least graphic and least disturbing torture sessions in movie history. Instead of being reduced to a piece of butchered meat, Johnny ends up looking like an underwear model with some tomato paste smeared on him.

The middle of the film is about one of Franziska's goons named Barney (Bob Golub) disposing of the traitor's body, only to seemingly have it to come back to life. This section of Johnny Virus has absolutely nothing to do with the first part and turns out to have absolutely nothing to do with the last part. Why is the middle of the movie like this? I have absolutely no idea.

The overlong final bit of this motion picture turns into a doublecross-a-thon where the audience is supposed to be kept guessing as each lie and betrayal is revealed. The only genuine betrayal, however, is of the viewer that wastes their time and money on Johnny Virus.

It wouldn't be entirely fair to say this group of performers can't act. I'm sure they'd be well received at dinner theaters throughout the state of Idaho, North Dakota and Utah. They're capable of mouthing dialog and conveying an emotion or two. I can't be too hard on them because as sub-mediocre as they are, these actors are by far the best thing about this film.

The writing is monosyllabic. The direction is confidently sclerotic. The sets look like something you'd find on the stage of a middle school gymnasium. The story has the tempo of a metronome on Thorazine. Everything reeks of the most self-indulgent sort of amateurism.

Clearly, Johnny Virus is the scripts of three separate and unrelated short films Crazy Glued together in a vain and vainglorious attempt at making a feature. Such a conglomeration only exponentially increases how much it sucks. This motion picture is boring, lifeless and fruitless as it staggers from one insipid scene to another.

Johnny Virus is one more movie that should never have made it to DVD. It shouldn't have been made at all in the first place. Don't watch it.