Subject: REVIEW: STRANGE DAYS (1995)

From: [email-masked] (Paul-Michael Agapow)
Date: 4 Dec 1996 16:27:09 GMT

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 ([email-masked]), La Trobe Uni, Infocalypse
[archived at http://www.cs.latrobe.edu.au/~agapow/Postviews/]