Strange Days (1995)

Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Richard Edson, Vincent D’Onofrio, Brigitte Bako, William Fichtner, Glenn Plummer, Josef Sommer. [R]

At the end of the millennium in a Los Angeles torn apart by racial animus and violence, people are looking for an escape, a relief, a distraction; enter Lenny Nero (Fiennes), a scuzzy black marketeer of the newest technological “drug”—a VR device that taps into the wearer’s cerebral cortex and allows them to “live” other people’s recordings, fulfilling fantasies and forgetting about their miserable existence. That’s just the entry point of this complex, purposeful science fiction thriller, which tangles Lenny up in neo-noir labyrinth populated by the likes of no-nonsense bodyguard/limo driver Mace (Bassett), a rock star ex-girlfriend (Lewis) he still pines for, a paranoid music mogul (Wincott), a slain rapper activist/prophet (Plummer), a couple of degenerate cops (D’Onofrio, Fichtner), and more. Bold, brash, tense, well-performed, and teeming with sharply-etched characterizations, it hits hard on both the visceral and thematic levels, subtlety be damned. The voyeuristic scenes of “jacking-in” can be equally exhilarating and sickening, with skillful handheld camerawork “down the rabbit hole.” Out in the real world, the skittering editing techniques keep the story somersaulting toward the year 2000 without ever resulting in visual disorder, and the atmosphere developed by director Bigelow is as palpable as its agenda/outlook are prescient. The film’s late, lasting images of Mace withstanding a gauntlet of hateful violence in the aftermath of a moral victory are so dramatically potent that they can’t be negated by the hasty and unconvincing resolution that immediately follows. It leaves a slightly sour aftertaste to the blazon of optimism cutting through the sociopolitical hellscape of its once dismal future, but a film as stealthily ambitious as this one was bound to suffer in chaos. Co-written and co-produced by James Cameron. Lewis does her own singing; the songs themselves are covers of PJ Harvey tunes.

87/100