Strange Days

STRANGE DAYS                   B+                  

USA  (145 mi)  1995  ‘Scope  d:  Kathryn Bigelow 

Look, I want you to know what we're talking about here. This isn't like TV only better. This is life.  It's a piece of somebody's life. Pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. You're there. You're doing it, seeing it, hearing it... feeling it.                

—Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes)

It’s about the stuff you can’t have, right, the forbidden fruit, hmm?  Like running into a liquor store with a .357 magnum in your hand, feeling the adrenaline pumping through your veins, huh? Or, um, you see that guy over there with the drop dead Philippino girlfriend, wouldn’t you like to be that guy for about twenty minutes, the right twenty minutes?  Yeah, and I can make it happen and you won’t even tarnish your wedding ring. See I can get you what you want, I can, I can get you anything, you just have to talk to me, you have to trust me, you can trust me. Cos I’m your priest, I’m your shrink, I am the main conection to the switchboard to the soul.  I’m the Magic Man, the Santa Claus of the subconscious. You say it, you even think it, you can have it.     

 —Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes)

You love that red, white, and blue, but you hate that black, black, black... But a new day is coming. 2K is coming.  The day of reckoning is upon us.  History is, and begins again, right here, right now.                —Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer)

Look, everybody needs to take a walk to the dark end of the street sometimes, it’s what we are. Now, the risks are out of line. The streets are a war zone, and sex can kill ya. So, you slip on the trodes, get what you need, almost as good as the real thing, and a lot safer.   —Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes)

Paranoia is just reality on a finer scale.         —Philo Gant (Michael Wincott)

You know one of the ways that movies are still better than playback? Cos the music comes up, there’s credits, and you always know when it’s over. IT’S OVER!!                      

— Faith (Juliette Lewis)

You’re some piece of work, Lenny Nero. You’re just calmly backstrokin’along through the big toilet bowl and somehow you never let it touch you. I mean between working vice and your current so-called occupation you must have seen every kind of perversion. But you’re just like some Teflon man, still come out this goofball romantic.                

—Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett)

Like Billy Wilder’s always popular The Apartment (1960), this is a terrific New Year’s eve movie.  Set in the year 1999, STRANGE DAYS is a wild look into the near future, a cyberpunk science fiction film, a picture of the world going out of control as we approach the New Year’s Millennium of 2000, told with a kind of apocalyptic over-kill, where already the streets of Los Angeles have been reduced to rubble, a veritable police state where citizens are openly beaten on the street by police in riot gear.  Written by former husband James Cameron and Jay Cocks, Bigelow’s approach is an over-the-top variation on the futuristic Blade Runner (1982), a picture of extravagance and largesse, oversaturated with kinetic energy, throbbing with a street life of filth, chaos and decay, showing a paranoid society on the verge of ruin, where law and order is all but absent, and the rules of society have been replaced by a rampant corruption.  Ralph Fiennes plays Lenny Nero, sort of a Harrison Ford gone to seed, as he’s a picture of sweat and grime most of the time, as if in need of detox, but his drug of choice is called playback, a video electronic device that records directly from the cerebral cortex, maximizing the potency of the experience when played back for the viewer, creating a virtual reality which, by its extreme intensity, overshadows reality.  Initially designed as a police surveillance tool, it has instead surged out of control in the rapidly developing underground black market, mostly targeting porno videos.  Lenny is a former vice cop who now makes his living selling these bootleg discs, where his expertise as a fast talking salesman are uncanny, but the world he thrives in is one of sleaze and smut, “I’m the magic man, the Santa Claus of the subconscious.”  His best friend is Max (Tom Sizemore), a private eye who roams in the subterranean realm, something of a moral cesspool, a guy with police connections everywhere but also seems to represent the scum of the earth.  Nonetheless, he’s the kind of guy that has Lenny’s back. 

While talking in a bar, a call girl friend of theirs named Iris (Brigitte Bako) arrives in a hysterical panic, afraid she is being pursued, but disappears in fright just as quickly, warning Lenny that his ex-girlfriend and still secret crush Faith (Juliette Lewis) is also in mortal danger.  Iris makes a panicked getaway on the subway, pursued by two equally manic cops, Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner, who show no regard for shooting directly into the line of fire of the public.  When they attempt to grab her, all they get is her wig, which includes a playback headset, suggesting it was all being recorded.  Lenny, meanwhile, feels compelled to visit Faith, who has flat-out dropped him, refusing to return any of his phone calls, leaving him more eager to see her.  They are visited in the bar by his other friend, Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett), a straight-laced bodyguard that sides as a bulletproof limo driver, protecting high-priced clientele.  She has a long history with Lenny and disapproves of his latest habit, as if he’s making a living distributing drugs and porno, but she’s a loyal friend.  In the bar, they view a socially relevant black rapper on the television, Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer), who uses the Millennium metaphor as the arrival of a coming judgment day, which is added to the mix of others who feel the world is coming to an end.  What’s perhaps most strange in this atmosphere of doom is the way the entire film is one long party sequence, all celebrating the coming New Year, where confetti, house music, and party revelers are seen and heard throughout.  What’s also obvious is Bigelow has a tremendous talent for building suspense, as the tension throughout is off the charts, creating a surreal and intoxicating mood and atmosphere. 

When Lenny hits the upscale nightclub where Faith hangs out, she’s unreachable, surrounded by security and her new boyfriend, Philo Gant (Michael Wincott), a sleazy music industry manager whose clients included Jeriko One, mysteriously murdered overnight, meaning his monetary value has only skyrocketed.  Faith ignores all his pleas to talk before going onstage and rocking the PJ Harvey song “Hardly Wait” Strange Days - Juliette Lewis "Hardly Wait" - YouTube (2:13).  Lenny gets his ass kicked by bodyguards for his efforts, but sneaks back in and meets her backstage, concerned for her safety, only to be told in no uncertain terms that it’s over between them.  What’s most disconcerting is receiving an anonymous disc that shows via playback a snuff recording of Iris’s death, which only sends Lenny into more of a panic, as some deranged person is obviously on the loose who enjoys the idea of sharing his demented thrills with Lenny.  STRANGE DAYS is a mixture of a societal panic spreading like a contagious disease, filled with incidents of racial turmoil and police brutality, a secret police death squad, a serial killer on the loose, and Lenny’s attempts, mostly through the aid of Mace, to figure it all out and bring some sense of rational order to the surrounding chaos spinning out of control.  Bassett was never in better shape in a movie, wearing a variety of form-fitting outfits while also kicking plenty of butt while aiding Lenny’s dangerous investigatory pursuits, as they meet plenty of bad guys along the way.  Lenny is more than a little scuffed up, where Los Angeles is simply covered in a seedy film noir depiction of endless brutality, where life is cheap and the end of the world is near.  Bassett makes a terrific femme fatale, while the usually affluent and upper crust Fiennes seems wearily overmatched through most of the film, yet the fact he’s such an odd choice only adds interest and intrigue to his dilemma.  Trying to survive in this shadowy world when forces are trying to destroy you is a thrill ride adventure, leading to a bizarre finale that fuses playback with reality, where all of the forces come together in a mish mosh of pandemonium and mayhem, all of which leads to the final New Year’s countdown, brought in with a bang.