If there’s such a thing as a New Years thriller then 1995’s STRANGE DAYS is an ideal candidate. Or at least, it would be if it weren’t allegedly caught up in a dispute between its financier Lightstorm Entertainment and distributor Twentieth Century Fox (a conflict exacerbated, no doubt, by Disney’s acquisition of Fox), which has kept the film from being released on Blu-ray in the US.
The film, in truth, isn’t very good, but it is interesting. That’s in keeping with the rest of director Kathryn Bigelow’s 1990s output, which included BLUE STEEL (1990) and POINT BREAK (1991), neither of which will make any Great Films listings but hold up far better than most nineties actioners (STRIKING DISTANCE, HARLEY DAVIDSON AND THE MARLBORO MAN, DEMOLITION MAN, ERASER, etc.). As with POINT BREAK, STRANGE DAYS’ source was a screenplay by Bigelow’s ex-husband James Cameron (with assistance from frequent Martin Scorsese collaborator Jay Cocks) that he initially intended to direct himself. I say there was a reason he discarded it.
The film begins on December 30, 1999 in Los Angeles, which is overrun with violent headbangers and has gas that’s over three dollars a gallon (gasp!). Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a sleazy ex-cop who peddles government manufactured virtual reality headsets that allow users to share a “piece of somebody’s life,” i.e. former headset wearers who’ve recorded their experiences and sold them to Lenny.
He’s friends, for some reason, with Mace Mason (Angela Bassett), a morally upstanding, strong-willed and sexy limo driver, yet still pines away for his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis), a singer who’s currently dating Philo (Michael Wincott), a scumbag music impresario. All are part of a conspiracy Lenny stumbles onto when he gets ahold of a snuff VR recording made by an unseen someone who rapes and murders a headset wearing woman, and then gets off by playing her experiences back
Also involved in the conspiracy are Burton Steckler (Vincent D’Onofrio), a corrupt cop who’s killed a prominent rapper (Glenn Thurman) and is now trying to cover up the crime (a very nineties subplot indeed), and Lenny’s pal Max Peltier (Tom Sizemore), who clearly has more to do with all this than he lets on. Both are present during a raucous New Year’s celebration in which a Rodney King-styled police beatdown occurs and lots of ass is kicked.
STRANGE DAYS bears many telltale touches of its writer, producer and (uncredited) editor James Cameron, most notably a script that tends to confuse plot development with elaborate action set-pieces (or “whammies”). That script, which also spends a great deal of time developing a protagonist who isn’t nearly as complex as Cameron seems to believe, is severely underbaked yet, conversely, wildly overdone, and Bigelow’s direction follows suit.
Ralph Fiennes is adequate in the lead role but Vincent D’Onofrio overacts mightily, as do the female leads Angela Basset and Juliette Lewis. Basset in particular was ill-served by the script, which fails to properly convey why it is that such a strong and intelligent woman would repeatedly risk her life for a man she (accurately) calls a “pussy-whipped, sorry-assed motherfucker.” The film would have us believe that Mace is in love with Lenny, but nineties Hollywood tended to be quite skittish about interracial romance (see THE BODYGUARD and THE PELICAN BRIEF for confirmation), which is all-too-evident here.
What’s impressive are the technical details, particularly the dense, colorful cinematography by Matthew F. Leonetti and the many scenes depicting what one sees through the VR headsets. The latter bits are superbly photographed with specially designed cameras, and paired with crisp and inventive sound design, making for sequences that back in 1995 represented the most impressive examples of POV filmmaking in existence.
Vital Statistics
STRANGE DAYS
Lightstorm Entertainment/Twentieth Century Fox
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
Producers: James Cameron, Steven-Charles Jaffe
Screenplay: James Cameron, Jay Cocks
Cinematography: Matthew F. Leonetti
Editing: Howard Smith
Cast: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Basset, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D’Onofrio, Glenn Plummer, Brigitte Bako, Richard Edson, William Fichtner, Josef Sommer, Joe Urla, Nicky Katt, Michael Jace, Louise LeCavalier, David Carrera, Jim Ishida, Tony Graff