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Strange Days
Kathryn Bigelow
USA, 1995, 139 minutes
Review by David Clark (1995)

Strange Days bombed out at the US box office and might do here, but should manage to become a cult classic, something along the lines of Trancers, maybe.

Kathryn Bigelow’s latest is a fast, very good-looking, fairly intelligent (very, in fact, by current Hollywood standards), high tech hi octane noir thriller. It’s a collaboration between Bigelow and co-scripter (solely credited for story) James Cameron (Aliens, Terminator 2, etc) and both are pretty much at their best. 

Ralph Fiennes (pretty good) is street hustler Lenny. Lenny sells ‛clips’, recordings made straight from the brains of wearers of ‛wire’ technology. His clients can experience violence, sex, literally anything they like, completely vicariously via a SQUID (Super-conducting Quantum Interference Device). The technology has nothing to do, I hasten to add, with boring old virtual reality; wire tech is far more immersive and realistic.

The MacGuffin is a snuff clip Lenny acquires that happens to feature the rape and murder of an old friend. Discovering that his ex-lover, nightclub singer Faith (Juliette Lewis, excellent), who he wants back, is also in danger, a twisting, turning, vertiginously executed story follows. Angela Bassett plays the bodyguard he leans on for emotional (and physical) support. 

Not too much is done with all this in either science-fictional or moral terms. Underneath Strange Days, there may be the ghost of a film about maintaining a sense of self amidst the constant stimulation of tomorrow’s street level technology. If that was wanted, perhaps moving a little slower would have helped. Strange Days bombs along. It’s so fast-forward, flashy and noisy that it virtually makes a fetish of its action. And it’s very generically cyberpunk. Bigelow and Cameron have certainly been at the William Gibson. Lenny Nero? Tick? SQUIDs? May as well be straight about it than pretend otherwise.

Strange Days isn’t smooth, either. It’s gritty and a bit grimy; I felt like I was picking up road dirt watching it. You can believe in the future seen here, though millennium eve (people just can’t resist Millennium Fever) is definitely too soon for some of this stuff.

Strange Days is not the best movie ever made, but it’s certainly not the crock some people are saying it is.