Movie Details
| Title: | Strange Days | |
| Director: | Kathryn Bigelow | |
| Year: | 1995 | |
| Genre: | Science Fiction | |
| Times Seen: | 1 | |
| Last Seen: | 09.07.25 |
Other Movies Seen By This Director (5)
- Detroit
- The Hurt Locker
- Near Dark
- Point Break
- Zero Dark Thirty
| Date Viewed | Venue | Note |
| 09.07.25 | Internet | My main memory of this film's initial release revolves around the teaser (which is available on Youtube). In the movie, Ralph Fiennes delivers his sales pitch / monologue to a prospective client at a restaurant, but the teaser re-films that speech delivered straight to camera with trademark mid-90s text on the screen echoing his keywords and flashes of generic cyber imagery, followed by the movie's title and main players in vivid bright colors set to pounding heavy guitars. It didn't really say anything about what the movie was about but me and my friends were already sold. Walking out of the movie, I remember being disappointed to learn that it was just a messy confusing crime story. The jacking in, the wiretripping sold to us in the teaser was just a setup for a more typical thriller. In other words: not what I signed up for. Now, in the light of Cyberpunk 2077, the little miniDisc brain recordings are clearly the Brain Dances in the game (although imdb trivia tells me the movie stole it from William Gibson's "simStims"). In that way - a pretty girl capturing something she shouldn't have then getting murdered for it - Cyberpunk lifted it pretty directly. Cyberpunk's Evelyn Parker even looks subtly styled to this movie's Iris. Watching this movie again though, the movie's clearly about Rodney King. In fact, the whole neo-noir template that's applied to the story feels like an excuse to make it about Rodney King. While I can't say the actions of evil LAPD officers aren't central to the plot, most of the movie almost plays out like a TV Show with an A plot and B plot. The stuff going on with Fiennes' Lenny Nero character and Juliette Lewis' (looking her absolute best) Faith character kind of felt shoe-horned into the Rodney King stuff to me. That may not be a fair judgement since the script does some heavy lifting to connect the two threads but I mostly felt this at the ending where there's one climactic fight then it cuts to Angela Bassett's Mace character and I was like "oh, right, this too." For me it made the ending feel clunky and disjointed. But, I've seen a lot of film noir in the 30 years after seeing this in theaters and I've got the nostalgia glasses on now, so I saw a lot of stuff that I liked this go-around. I think this might've been the first movie I saw Ralph Fiennes in? Oh, no of course not. Checking imdb, this was after Schindler's List and Quiz Show but before The English Patient, so he would've been at "that guy" level for me. Still, having a career full of Voldemorts and English gentlemen ("would that it were so simple") and everything in between since this, it's pretty cool to see his blue eyes and angular chin playing a shlubby loser. I think a thing I didn't like back then was how not-cool he was (especially since he was like a master salesman in the teaser) but now I know he's filling a noir archetype so he's supposed to be in over his head, he's supposed to be a washed-up loser. Bruce Willis made a career of this, but I think Fiennes pulled it off reasonably well. Also, at the time I was not a big fan of Juliette Lewis. Stuff like Cape Fear and Kalifornia and Natural Born Killers established her as a kind of feral wildcat but I found her nasal voice offputting and wasn't a fan of her look. Again, now that I'm not a child or teenager or whatever, knowing she went on to a long wide-ranging film and music career, I see why she was such a breakout star around this time now. In this movie she gets to sing PJ Harvey songs and act like a rock star, which I think she was trying to be for real at this moment. Plus, since this was an R-rated movie in the 90s, she had to perform practically all her scenes topless which had to be tough. Other actors that now carry greater weight pop up in supporting roles. Vincent D'Onofrio (who I think I recognized as "that guy from Full Metal Jacket") and William Fichtner are perfectly cast as the over-the-top evil cops because they both have very punchable faces, Tom Sizemore (in a terrible wig), Nicky Katt (barely recognizable with his bleached-blonde hair, maybe also a wig), Michael Jace (that gay cop guy from The Shield), all to meet tragedy in various forms. Glenn Plummer (or "That black guy from Speed") and Richard Edson ( or "That guy from the parking garage in Ferris Bueller" if you haven't seen Stranger Than Paradise or Do The Right Thing) is always fun to see. Also, I think this is the only other movie I've seen Steve Buscemi look-alike Todd Graff in other than with his pet rat in The Abyss). More good stuff I liked: They only skip like five years in the future (to hit that millenium which felt like a big thing at the time) but I think they did a decent job of not overdoing the future shit. I think they intended the miniDiscs that the brainscans are recorded on to be actual Sony MiniDiscs? And aside from voice-to-text on the answering machine and martial law with eternally burning vehicles on every street of LA, there really isn't much different in future-world. The potato chip bags and beer bottles are still the same. The techno-rave chain-link-and-fishnet-stockings party scene was probably meant to look dystopian and futuristic - Michael Wincott's playing basically the same character as he did in The Crow? - but come off today just looking like every other 90s movie rave. But speaking of wigs, are we supposed to believe that people don't notice when you have the brain scan thingy on top of your own hair and a wig on top of that? Like, we know Tom Sizemore's long hair is a wig because he's Tom Sizemore and probably about to shoot Heat or Natural Born Killers or True Romance, but is everyone in this world ok with wigs on hair? The wig industry must be booming. This wound up being longer than I thought. What did I think overall? I think the plot is still pretty messy and it's not as cool as I want it to be and it's like 30 - 60 minutes too long (two and a half hours? seriously?) but there's plenty to like here. You can feel Jim Cameron's sensibility in the script, you can feel Kathryn Bigelow's sensibility in the direction, it's got that banging 90s soundtrack (how else would you get a Doors cover by Prong featuring Ray Manzarek?), and it's a reminder that even though we look back at the 90s fondly as the peak of our American experience, there was still a lot to complain about back then. |
