Buy Strange Days on Amazon Video (paid link)
Written by: James Cameron (story), James Cameron and Jay Cocks (screenplay)
Directed by: Kathryn Bigelow
Starring: Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'Onofrio, Glenn Plummer, William Fichtner, Nicky Katt
Rated: R
Watch the trailer
Plot
During the last days of 1999 in a gritty, futuristic Los Angeles, an ex-cop turned street hustler finds himself thrown into a conspiracy of murder and blackmail.
Verdict
It's a bit of a pulpy mystery with a black market hustler finding himself embroiled in the middle of all kinds of crimes. Initially he's asking why, but soon enough he's trying to escape. While the story isn't bad, it's the setting that makes this movie. It's a dirty, sleazy future Los Angeles that skews cyberpunk with a low class high technology world. I love that genre, and it's a fun setting we don't see often. It's a movie where I like what it wants to do more than what's actually accomplishes.
It depends.
Review
The story focuses on first person 'virtual' recordings. The opening scene depicts a robbery from that perspective, and it turns out Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) is buying the video. He's a hustler on the black market selling these banned videos. This is the future in 1999, and Los Angeles is a war zone with civil unrest and militarized police. Lenny is a former cop that sells his wares in the seedier joints of Los Angeles. Everything is dark, dirty, and covered in graffiti. Everyone seems depraved to some degree, but part of that is this is the world in which Lenny resides.
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| Ralph Fiennes plays Lenny Nero |
He's still hung up on his ex, Faith (Juliette Lewis), and the videos he peddles allows him to relive their moments together. These videos also make him a target of one of Faith's friends Iris. She's in trouble, and trying to locate Lenny for help. She's too late, and someone gives Lenny a disc of Iris's murder. He's left another video, likely from the same person that killed Iris. It's clear they're trying to scare Lenny away from looking into this situation.
Lenny wants to find out what's going on, more for the movie's plot than anything else. I suppose being a former cop he has a sense of justice. We saw a pair of cops chasing Iris previously, and it's certainly plausible they killed her. Now they're after Lenny and the disc Iris managed to get to him. Is this just dirty cops trying to cover up their misdeeds? What did they do?
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| Juliette Lewis, Michael Wincott play Faith Justin, Philo Gant |
When Lenny finally sees what was on the disc, he realizes how big it is. It's the reason the cops want that disc, but there's also another entity that wants to erase the video less they're exposed. This is a murder mystery that's made unique bet the setting and futuristic society. The answers get complicated, but it boils down to one death kicked off the events of a cover up. Lenny is chosen as the fall guy. He's just the wrong person in the wrong place. Since he's part of this depraved world, the people behind this decided it would be easy to pin everything on him.
The world building helps this stand out despite the middling mystery. Violence rarely feels this depraved as characters are forced to watch and interact with the crimes via these videos. Their strong reactions in turn make what we've witnessed worse despite this not being very graphic. Characters rarely have such strong reactions as they're usually at the center of events. Here they're detached, horrified at what's being witnessed.
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