STRANGE DAYS
A film review by Paul-Michael Agapow
Copyright 1996 Paul-Michael Agapow
It is the last day of 1999 in a Los Angeles teetering on the brink of civil war. Lenny (Fiennes) is a ex-cop gone to seed and pedalling "clips" --- full sensory experiences recorded on and played back from disk. As the year 2000 approaches and Lenny hustles, he finds himself threatened by unknown forces somehow connected with his ex-girlfriend, musician Faith (Lewis). Aided by bodyguard/driver Mace (Bassett) and scuzzy plainclothes cop Max (Sizemore), he trys to solve the mystery.
The vilification that "Strange Days" was subjected to by critics is difficult to explain. It is not a film without problems, but it still packs a mighty punch and its recent release of video gives hope that this tough and dense film might find its audience.
Possibly critics were primed by names on the production staff. Although Bigelow is widely regarded as a very talented director, she has produced some astoundingly bad movies. (Examples : the silly "Blue Steel" and the even sillier "Point Break".) SF-movie guru Cameron as producer and writer raises other problems. As a science-fiction film-maker, he makes good action films. "Aliens" and "Terminator 2" are, at their heart, action films with SF elements being largely replaceable or extraneous to the plot. Strangely enough both Bigelow and Cameron emerge out with flying colours. Although some motifs are purloined from other films (notably "Bladerunner", "T2" and "City of Lost Children"), Bigelow's direction is inventive and deft, capturing a millennial LA in a bright staccato stream of images. Even on video this wall of images and sound is overwhelming, like the city careering towards a new age. Cameron's script is intermittently clever. It is perhaps arguable whether the SF elements are irreplaceable but the story itself is comfortable with them and exploits them, confirming its SF nature. Thankfully it also avoids being the stream of wisecracks and stunts that passes for many scripts nowadays.
Acting is generally of a high standard. Bassett is fabulous as the hardened Mace, and Fiennes is great as the charming but decaying Lenny. If anyone was looking to cast a William Gibson's "Neuromancer", these two _are_ Molly Millions and Case.
There are also some painful issues dealt with in "Strange Days", not all immediately apparent. Is a race or class war necessary to solve inequality? Do lives have to be sacrificed to save the living? (There are two answers to that, one which we would want to be true and one we fear is true.) Images and the media are pervasive and untrustworthy. Lenny's flashbacks look like movies. He treats clips of Faith as memories rather than symbols of memories. Images are constantly seen in reflections and mirrors, pictures that look the same but are reversed.
Conversely, there are some problems. The film suffers from "Cameron bloat": the inability to tell a film in a reasonable amount of time. (See "Abyss" et al.) The first hour of the film is busy rather than complex, failing to really start the story until halfway. The subplot concerning Faith (Juliette Lewis playing the same characters she does in everything these days) is fairly tenuously connected to the rest of the movie. The eventual logic of the plot and character motivation is fairly suspect too, although to be fair this is apparent largely in hindsight. Also puzzling is the film's ambivalent attitude to the LAPD, perhaps a reflection of everyone's ambivalence to law enforcement. This can be seen in a central event in the film, a re-enactment of the Rodney King beating, and how it differs from its realworld analog in circumstance and eventual resolution. Also a few small cliches and stupidities show up in the climax literally in the last ten minutes, but this and the previous point cannot be discussed further without spoilers.
Nonetheless, "Strange Days" is recommended strongly as a ambitious and successful SF piece. Hopefully in years to come it will achieve greater recognition. For those concerned by such things, it contains significant amounts of sex, nudity and disturbing (but not graphic) violence. [****/mustsee] and dive bombing on the Sid and Nancy scale.
"Strange Days" Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Produced by James Cameron et al. Story by James Cameron and Jay Cocks. Starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore. Released 1995.
------ paul-michael agapow (agapow@latcs1.oz.au), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse [archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]
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