Strange Days (review)
Story by: James Cameron
Director: Kathryn Bigelow (Near Dark, Blue Steel)
Stars: Ralph Fiennes, Juliette Lewis, Angela Bassett, Tom Sizemore
Strange Days is a science fiction movie, somewhat outdated because it deals with the millennium - this may make it more interesting to some, less to others.
The movie is set in Los Angeles in the last few days before the year 2000. Racial tensions are at a high and the city is under martial law. It is this dystopian background against which the story is set.
The plot is driven by a single piece of technology, called Playback. The premise is this: using a SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device, a real piece of technology, incidentally), a person's brain activity can be recorded. Through another device (the details of which are not specified), those experiences (in all five senses) can be played back, either to to the same person, or to another party. The technology is black market, and the main character of the story, an ex-cop named Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), is a dealer in recorded experiences. People come to him to purchase a variety of such experiences, ranging from simple pornography to more exotic activities.
The plot is set in motion by a combination of two seemingly unrelated events. The first is the execution style murder of black activist and rapper Jericho One. The second is the anonymous delivery of a Playback clip to Lenny, showing a first person account of the brutal rape and murder of one of his friends.
Using his police contacts, Lenny attempts to investigate his friend's murder, with the help of his bodyguard/limo driver friend, Macy (Angela Bassett). As he does so, he finds himself getting dragged deeper and deeper into a web of intrigue and deception, in the style of a classic film noir.
As if this wasn't enough, our unfortunate protagonist is also trying to deal with the heartbreak of losing his girlfriend, a singer/ex-prostitute named Faith (Juliette Lewis), whose new boyfriend seems to Lenny to be entangled in the same plot in some unknown way.
Strange Days is, in my opinion, one of the greatest movies made. I have watched it more times than any other movie and have not yet grown tired of it. The plot fits the film noir genre closely enough to be familiar and accessible, but not so closely as to be predictable. The acting is excellent all around, although Juliette Lewis' typecast role as a whiny, white trash junky may irritate some viewers. Macy is by far the coolest female character in any movie I've ever watched - a real badass while still being a believable, three-dimensional woman. Lenny's incompetence and neurosis is a refreshing change from the usual superhuman heroes of other science-fiction thrillers. The premise is original, the plot captivating and the cinematography beautiful and haunting (watch the use of lighting and shadow, and the mood-setting things going on in the backgrounds of scenes). To top it all off, the movie has an awesome soundtrack, featuring Tricky, Skunk Anasie, Deep Forest and others.
If you have not seen this movie, I insist that you go out and rent it immediately. You won't regret it!