Strange Days

Strange Days (1995)
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, and Juliette Lewis
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Rating: ****

The year is 1999, the world (or at least Los Angeles) is in choas with gangs running wild in the streets, pseduo-martial law enacted, religious prophesiers claiming it's the end of the world and from the looks of things, it very well might be. But don't tell that to ex-vice cop Lenny Nero (Fiennes), true to his name, makes a living (if you can call it that) off of selling people's memories as virtual reality experiences. Now, these aren't any ordinary memories that Lenny sells, no, he sells, to put it bluntly, smut... you know, things like an 18-year-old girl showering herself to a 40-something lawyer looking for the "thrill" of cheating on his wife without actually doing the deed... so to speak. However, Lenny has guidelines and won't deal in memories of people killing or being killed.

While most of us would willingly fork over mounds of cash to be someone else, even for just a short while, we can't.... and technically, neither can Lenny; you see, the device used to record and transmit these memories is federal issue and illegal for civilian use. So Lenny is constantly on the down-low, meeting with people in the back-rooms of bars and in small garages to make deals... in his spare time, he wires himself up, playing back memories of a lost flame named Faith (Juliette Lewis) who left Lenny for some reason that is never explained in the film. However, Faith is still hanging around in Los Angeles, weighing down the arm of a hot-shot manager named Philo (Michael Wincott) who manages a high-profile, highly outspoken gangsta rapper named Jerchio-One (think Tupac Shakur meets Bob Marley) who is suddenly murdered.

You see, Lenny is still head-over-heels in love with Faith, and so he makes the usual, Say Anything gestures like slinking around Philo's club where Faith performs. Lenny does this fairly regularly and, for his troubles, also gets the shit kicked out of him by Philo's bodyguards regularly and gets shot down by Faith regularly. Now, while this may seem like a poor excuse for a romantic comedy with cyberpunk thrown in for a little flair, it's not. The story picks up when a VR tape addressed to Lenny shows the murder of a prostitute he and Faith were friendly with while they were dating. Lenny, with this help of his martial-artist escort Mace (Angela Bassett) set forth to try to solve the murder.

However, in the process of trying to solve this first murder, Lenny and Mace begin unravelling a tangeled web of lies and cover-ups that all lead back to the murder of Philo's number-one client, the outspoken Jericho-One. Being a cop, Lenny begins to put the peices together and realizes that his old flame Faith may be in danger, and he has to try and solve the mystery before she's killed. But unfortunately for Lenny, every clue creates more questions than answers and soon makes Lenny a target himself as he uncovers a coverup running deeper than he ever could have immagined.

Using elements from the Thriller genre, Science Fiction genre, and a surprising ammount from the Film-Noir genre, Strange Days, really surprised me as a very smart, well crafted cyberpunk thriller that doesn't take its audience for granted. The special effects andtechnical aspects of this film are very well done, and this movie would have been solidified as an instant classic if it hadn't been for the execution of the film's "whodunnit" mystery sub-plots. While a "gotcha" ending wasn't what I was expecting, and was happy it was there, the weight of the surprise was lessened by poor character development and wooden acting.

Acting: ***-1/2
The acting was alright for this kind of a movie... better than most paper-thin science-fiction movie dialogue. The major kudos here go to Ralph Fiennes as Lenny Nero, who is very nearly in every scene and creates a level of depth to a character that could have otherwise been very forgettable. Everyone else was alright, with some surprising moments from Vincent D'Onofrio playing a crooked cop, but my major beef is with Juliette Lewis. Lewis was her usual, so-so self in this film... playing a jaded, manipulative ex-prostitue. She actually had me pulled in as the prototypical film-noir femme fatale, but when it was needed the most, Lewis fell flat and couldn't deliever. Ray Fiennes makes a damned good substitute for Humphrey Bogart, but Juliette Lewis is definately no Lauren Bacall.

Plot: ***1-/2
The plot kept me interested... I'm not going to lie, even though the movie is probably too long for its own good (2-1/2 hours? Really?) with some worthless backstory, needless fighting scenes, and a overly-lengthy ammount of time spent on Juliette Lewis' stage performances. The pluses here were the twist ending which I was honestly caught off guard by, even though I shouldn't have. I'm not going to ruin it, but James Cameron (the film's screenwriter) does a fantastic job of showing characters in the right way to make you think twice about the motives of those you really shouldn't be. Also, I really enjoyed the sci-fi aspect of the film... the virtual reality idea, while logistically rediculous for a movie set only 4 years in the future (meanwhile it doesn't look like pop-culture has moved a day past April 24, 1992), it was a good plot device and effective deus-ex machina.

Cinematography: ****
A really, really superb effort from Matthew Leonetti here as he's able to do some great 1st person POV shots for the VR sequences and also create that classic film-noir mise-en-scene. I only remember one scene shot during the day time, the rest of the movie it shot in night-for-night. This allows for some really amazing contrasts in the last hour or so of the movie which takes place New Years Eve in the center of a massive party. Not only did the lighting here had to be perfect for many of the shots Bigelow's shots, but the execution of the camera movements had to be like clockwork to get that true-to-life VR experience.

Direction: ****
Katheryn Bigelow is a director who likes to take chances and that much is pretty obvious when watching this movie. She didn't want to have a typical crime thriller, she didn't want to have a typical cyberpunk movie, she didn't want to do things by the book, she wanted to go out and experiement. Now, granted, the experiments didn't all turn out like they should have, some of the plot could have been axed and replaced to flush out the other characters more and some of the key participants should have been more integral to the overall storyline than they were and others who weren't as integral should have been less so, but on the whole, the story flows very nicely and the movie has just the right balance of action and intellegence.

Entertainment Value: ****-1/2
Entertainment value is something Strange Days has in spades. It is the major redeeming quality of this movie and what will make me want to watch it again and again. It is a 2-1/2 hour movie that really only feels like 1 and that's saying something for how drawn out some of the scenes actually are. There is a great pace to the movie, the time isn't spent on building up the characters and then going to the action, the action is what facilities the buildup of the characters, and the villains and heros in this movie are pretty clear cut which could be a flaw, but in a movie like this, that's how they are supposed to be... with the exception of that one character who plays the role of the film's "surprise," which, also is another reason for the film being highly entertaining. You get VR POV sequences, club rave sequences, car-chase sequences and hand-to-hand comabt sequences in a movie that for all intents and purposes really is a neo-noir. What more could you want?

I reccomend this film for someone who is looking to enjoy a smart action movie... and not Matrix psuedo-philosophical smart, but really and genuinely topical. The movie doesn't come out and say it, but there are poweful themes of love, trust, honor, and power that are food for thought once those final credits role. This movie "exeperience" isn't perfect and at times can be down-right silly... but those moments are few and far between... and if you're like me, you won't notice them until afterwards anyways... just like a good movie is supposed to do.

So with those explinations we get these final ratings:

Acting: ***-1/2
Plot: ***-1/2
Cinematography: ****
Direction: ****
Entertainment Value: ****-1/2

and the final total of **** of 5 for Strange Days.