Directed by:
Kathryn BigelowCinematography:
Matthew F. LeonettiComposer:
Graeme RevellCast:
Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'Onofrio, Glenn Plummer, Brigitte Bako, Richard Edson (more)Plots(1)
It's the eve of the millennium in Los Angeles, December 31, 1999. Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is an ex-cop turned street hustler who preys on human nature by dealing the drug of the future. It's an environment that will lead him deep into the danger zone when he falls into a maze filled with intrigue and betrayal, murder and conspiracy. (official distributor synopsis)
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Reviews (5)
As you can see, Strange Days has received awkward reviews and comments on this database. Many people struggle with this dark-action crime story with a sci-fi theme. Personally, I claim that I thoroughly enjoyed this cyberpunk-influenced affair with dirty characters and an apocalyptic urban atmosphere that has long ceased to control itself. Traditionally excellent, Fiennes delivers a fantastic performance and Juliette Lewis had not yet been affected by drug experiments and plastic surgery at this point. I actually only have two objections. Cyberpunk traditionally portrays strong female characters and it is said that Kathryn Bigelow has balls. However, her heroine is perceived as powerful as a larger military unit and that action part is somewhat exaggerated and cheaply flashy because of her. And the knife firmly embedded in the back of the unlucky hero would mean premature termination of the fight and actually the end of the movie's story, not a prelude to an impressive twist in the battle. Overall impression: 75%.
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A compelling sci-fi whodunit on the edge of the noir genre. Kathryn Bigelow has a way with L.A. at night and never once leaves the seedy alleys of corrupt life on all sides of the law. Ralph Fiennes, another very unpredictable protagonist, is very much at home and gives another of his excellent performances. James Cameron's screenplay is a superior work until the very end, which is an unpleasant concentration of all the genre clichés, including the final denouement, which could have broken down the fact that the killer is a gardener even better. Still, thanks to the strange mood of the Y2K scare (by the way, probably one of the most realistic variations on this haunting theme in its time), Strange Days is as impressive as it can be, despite the exorbitant runtime, and much can be forgiven in terms of the film’s negatives.
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Atmospheric sci-fi that won me over just because it begins on my thirteenth birthday :-). The powerful POV beginning either grips you (I was delighted) or not (mom gave up on it after half an hour). Ralph Fiennes plays a (very untraditional) over-talkative gabber who has everything but good luck for most of the movie (btw, it’s pretty cool that Lenny is named after a DVD burner program - Nero :-). Cameron’s signature is very clear, even though the movie gained its form from his ex-wife, Kathryn Bigelow. Human kind is usually depicted as a gang of evil madmen, junkies or simple jerks and the only positive character here is Mace. A dark vision of the future/past literally drips from this picture. When I look back ten years, I’m quite glad that it didn’t really look like that then. I'm the magic man... Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you think it, you can have it.
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“You see?” This postmodern neo-noir flick elevates the traditional questioning of elementary certainties to a new dimension. In an age of memory set fully in media, when people themselves become a recording medium and memories are a very marketable commodity, the boundaries between present and past, between public and private, between work and artist are irreversibly obliterated. This is a post-ideological age in which all schools of thought are disparaged and the only persistent logic is the logic of the market, making it impossible to express real feelings, to express an idea and to mean it seriously. Romantic relationships have been replaced by one-night stands, in the extreme case only virtual. In Strange Days, the dissolution of the long-term cohabitation of two people is symbolically linked to the loss of Faith, as Lenny’s girlfriend is called. To escape into an idyll, into a world that hasn’t been made exceedingly technical and to days literally and figuratively permeated with light, a device, a means of representing not only drugs but, in a broader sense, all of life, is used. The dissemination of information without context, with emphasis on immediate emotional (and, if possible, physical) response, deprives people of accountability and the necessity of thinking. It suffices to see and experience this here and now. The need to define one’s ungraspable experience of the world has reached absurd proportions. Because the real possibilities of getting to know the world better have been exhausted, the realm of the imaginary has come into play, though it has little in common with the atrophied human imagination – the content of the mind can now be converted into a common code that, thanks to technology, is easily understandable and rewritable by anyone. The last form of private property has become widely available. The relativity of the subjective perception of the world has been multiplied many times over. What do we see when we see what someone else has seen? The flashback, that classic means of film narrative, has penetrated reality. But, “Are you sure it’s real?” Cameron’s visionary screenplay offers enough philosophically substantial material for several films, which is both Strange Days’ greatest strength and its greatest weakness. There is something for everyone – media theorists, prophets of the apocalypse, sci-fi fans and feminists (the women here are at least morally stronger than the men). Kathryn Bigelow is also deserving of admiration, as she succeeded in taming this monster of an idea. The dark settings jam-packed with images (and images of images) and sounds and filmed in long Steadicam shots with minimal depth of field almost induce vertigo. Attention is permanently stress-tested due to the distractions created with light and sound. We are not told what we should notice; to some extent, it relies on how well the human eye is trained in a person whose visual mode is characterised by the word “inattentiveness”. The impermanence of the perception of reality that needs only to be retrieved and replayed displaces the need to gaze at the object of interest for a moment. It is not a pleasant experience to watch it twice and everything tends to peculiarly fall apart, shattering the image (in the climax, which is reminiscent The Lady from Shanghai), but this is how we experience reality and thus how we live. Life in the unconscious and in the unseen. 85%
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The irresistibly dark atmosphere of a crowded metropolis at the end of the millennium, when people are emotionally entertained by illegal virtual projections. The anticipation of the year 2000 gives the film a different dimension, and even though today we know that the century wasn’t that big a deal and that not much has changed, it is an interesting work of fiction. Produced by James Cameron.
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