Strange Days (film)
Strange Days is a 1995 American science fiction thriller film directed by Kathryn Bigelow, from a screenplay by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and based on a story by Cameron. The film stars Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, and Vincent D'Onofrio. Set in Los Angeles on the last two days of 1999, the film follows Lenny Nero (Fiennes), a black marketeer of an electronic device that allows a user to experience the recorded memories and physical sensations of other people, and Lornette "Mace" Mason (Bassett), a bodyguard and limousine driver, as they are drawn into a criminal conspiracy involving Nero's ex-girlfriend Faith Justin (Lewis) and the murder of a prostitute.
Strange Days
James Cameron
- James Cameron
- Steven-Charles Jaffe
- Howard Smith
- James Cameron
- 20th Century Fox (North America, France and Italy)
- Universal Pictures (through United International Pictures, International)
- October 6, 1995 (New York)
- October 14, 1995 (United States)
145 minutes
United States
English
$42 million
$17 million[1]
Blending science fiction with film noir conventions, Strange Days explores themes such as racism, abuse of power, rape and voyeurism. Although the story was conceived by Cameron around 1986, Bigelow found inspiration from high profile incidents such as the Lorena Bobbitt incident and the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Principal photography began in Los Angeles on June 6, 1994, and concluded on October 14. Several of the film's scenes, which offer a point-of-view shot, required multi-faceted cameras and considerable technical preparation.
A major commercial failure, Strange Days nearly derailed Bigelow's career, grossing only $17 million against its $42 million budget. The film polarized critics upon release, while some praised the cinematography, visual style, and performances of the cast, others criticized its portrayal of rape and violence. Its critical standing has improved over the years, gaining a cult following. At the 22nd Saturn Awards, where the film received five nominations, Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director.
Plot[edit]
As 1999 nears its end, Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone. A Chinese restaurant is robbed by a group of criminals, with one recording the event with a SQUID, an illegal electronic device that records memories and physical sensations directly from the wearer's cerebral cortex onto a MiniDisc-like storage device.
Lenny Nero, a former LAPD officer turned black marketeer of SQUID recordings, buys the robbery clip from his main supplier Tick. Elsewhere, Iris, a prostitute and former friend of Faith Justin (Lenny's ex-girlfriend), is chased by LAPD officers Burton Steckler and Dwayne Engelman. Iris escapes on a subway car, but Engleman pulls off her wig, revealing a SQUID recorder headset.
Lenny pines for Faith and relies on emotional support from his two best friends - Max Peltier, a private investigator, and Lornette "Mace" Mason, his bodyguard and limousine driver. Mace has unrequited feelings for Lenny from when he was still a cop and acted as a father figure for her son after her boyfriend was arrested on drug charges, but disapproves of his SQUID-dealing business. While Lenny and Max are drinking at a bar, Iris drops a SQUID disc through the sunroof of Lenny's car before it is towed away. Mace picks Lenny up and takes him to a nightclub where Faith is going to sing. There, Lenny receives a SQUID disc from a contact and unsuccessfully tries to get Faith away from her new boyfriend, Philo Gant. Gant is a music industry mogul who managed the recently murdered rapper Jeriko One.
While in the car with Mace, Lenny plays the disc the contact gave him and watches Iris being brutally raped and murdered by an attacker at the Sunset Regent hotel. As they approach the hotel, Iris is taken out on a stretcher. The next day, they take the disc to Tick, who cannot identify the source of the recording, but recalls that Iris was looking for Lenny. Deducing Iris may have left something in Lenny's car, Mace and Lenny go to the impound and find Iris's disc. Steckler and Engleman appear and demand the disc at gunpoint, but Lenny and Mace escape in her car before being forced to stop at a dock. Steckler pours gasoline on the car and sets it on fire, but Mace drives it into the harbor, extinguishing the flames. When they reach the surface, the cops have left.
Mace takes Lenny to her brother's house and they watch Iris's disc, showing Iris was with Jeriko One when Steckler and Engleman pulled him over and murdered him because his anti-police lyrics and activism incited protests against the LAPD. The two return to Tick, who Max reveals has been rendered brain-dead from forceful exposure to amplified SQUID signals. Lenny fears Iris's attacker covered his tracks by "killing" Tick and will come after Faith. Back at the nightclub, Lenny and Mace confront Faith, who reveals that Philo is afraid Iris's disc would reveal that he kept his artists under surveillance. Lenny and Mace disagree over whether to trade the disc to Philo for Faith's freedom or release it publicly, which could incite a citywide riot. As midnight approaches, Lenny and Mace sneak into a private party that Philo is hosting at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel for the city's wealthy elite. Lenny has a change of heart and tells Mace to give the disc to deputy police commissioner Palmer Strickland.
In Philo's penthouse suite, Lenny finds Philo brain-dead on the floor and another disc, revealing Faith's affair with Max, who "fried" Philo's brain with an amplified recording of them feigning rape. Pointing a gun at Lenny, Max explains that Philo hired him to kill Iris, but when Philo wanted Faith dead as part of the coverup, he decided to frame Lenny for the murders. Lenny and Max struggle in a fight, which culminates with Lenny throwing Max off the balcony to his death. Meanwhile, on the crowded streets, Mace subdues Steckler and Engelman but other officers take down Mace. Strickland arrives and orders Mace's release and to arrest Steckler and Engelman for murder. Engelman commits suicide; Steckler threatens Mace, but the officers gun him down. Lenny then finds Mace and the two share a kiss as the crowd celebrates the turn of the new millennium.
Themes[edit]
Although Strange Days is generally classified as a science fiction thriller, the film uses multiple narrative elements such as film noir conventions like the femme fatale.[5][20] The terms "techno-thriller", "tech-noir", and "futuristic erotic thriller" have also been used.[3][5][8] In 2001, cultural critic Steven Shaviro compared Strange Days to Cameron's earlier films, stating that the film "has characters that the viewer is supposed to identify with, and a plot full of thrills, exciting action sequences and unexpected twists. But at the same time, Strange Days is very much an experimental film, one that questions and inverts the traditional and Hollywood structures of identification and involvement, in ways that are consonant with the ideas that have been put forward by feminist film criticism over the last thirty years."[21] The film's dystopian society and use of SQUID technology, which has been compared to the "simstim" technology in William Gibson's 1984 novel Neuromancer, were also considered cyberpunk concepts.[3][20]
The film explores controversial themes such as abuse of power, racism, and rape.[7][22] Voyeurism is also a major element due to the protagonist's extensive use of SQUID technology.[22] The fact that the film was directed by a woman was even more controversial,[22] with film critic Michael Mirasol noting that had Strange Days been directed by a man, these scenes would likely have been criticized as sexist and misogynistic.[23] Nevertheless, Bigelow insisted that the film does not glorify violence and that it has a positive purpose.[7][12] According to her, "I wanted to treat 'the system' fairly, because if it's the enemy, then we're the enemy, since by not changing it we're reproducing it... The film ends in a strong insistence on hope. Ultimately it's humanity - not technology - that takes us into the next century and the next millennium."[7] In 2015, The Washington Post editor Sonny Bunch felt that Strange Days was still relevant, comparing the imagery captured by the SQUID units to that of first-person shooters or cellphone videos on YouTube. He added that events such as Jeriko One's murder and the subsequent coverup of the crime by the two police officers contribute to activist movements like Black Lives Matter, and that their media documentation amplifies their reception and consequences.[24]
Mace was seen as a strong yet very feminine character, as she often rescues Lenny in dire situations and shows maternal concern for him.[23] Both characters represent a significant contrast: Mace is the film's hero and moral center, whereas Lenny is the antihero; Mace is black and Lenny is white; and finally, Mace represents the "hard-edged, reality-based" component, while Lenny is dominated by fantasies.[3] This is especially notable when Mace yells to Lenny, "This is your life! Right here! Right now! It's real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not playback!"[20] The film's white characters also tend to be nihilistically concerned with the present, while the black characters are generally future revolutionaries.[3] Bigelow considered Strange Days her most personal film, claiming that "It's a synthesis of all the different tracks I've been exploring, either deliberately or unconsciously, ever since I started making art."[25]
Release[edit]
Box office[edit]
Strange Days premiered at the New York Film Festival on October 6, 1995,[26] grossing $31,062 on that weekend.[27] It expanded a week later on October 13, 1995 in 1,691 theaters and grossed $3,656,012 on its opening weekend.[27] The film's poor performance at the box office was compared to Jade and The Scarlet Letter, which opened at the same time and had a similar budget.[28] Overall, the film went on to make $7,959,291 in the United States and Canada, little more than a sixth of its $42 million production cost.[27] As a result, Strange Days was considered a commercial failure, due in part to the poor marketing strategy and lack of audience understanding.[5] The film almost derailed Bigelow's career, as five years would pass before she directed her next film, The Weight of Water.[25] Internationally, Strange Days was distributed by United International Pictures where it grossed $9 million for a worldwide total of $17 million.[1][29][30][31]
Critical reception[edit]
Upon release, Strange Days polarized film critics. Roger Ebert, who gave the film four out of four stars, described it as "a technical tour de force" and highlighted the film's astute use of SQUID technology, stating that "Bigelow is able to exploit the idea of what is happening; she forces her audience to deal with the screen reality, instead of allowing us to process it as routine 'action.'"[32] The film's technical aspects were also praised by Variety editor Todd McCarthy, who remarked that no other film since Lady in the Lake in 1947 had "experimented so extensively with the subjective camera".[33] In a mixed review, Owen Gleiberman of Entertainment Weekly gave the film a "B−" rating, concluding that Strange Days "has a dazzling atmosphere of grunge futurism, but beneath its dark satire of audiovisual decadence lurks a naggingly conventional underworld thriller."[34] Edward Guthmann of the San Francisco Chronicle criticized the film for failing to commentate its violence, saying that "Bigelow's style is so visceral [...] that her movie reminds us of a snuff film, rather than a well-reasoned cautionary tale about our animal instincts."[35] New York magazine writer David Denby called the rape scene "the sickest sequence in modern movies".[36]
The performances of the lead characters were highlighted very positively.[26][37][8] Writing for Chicago Tribune, film critic Michael Wilmington praised Fiennes' performance because it captures "the weaselly, pleading side of Lenny", while noting "the slight formality of his diction", which he felt gives the character depth.[8] Similarly, in her review for The New York Times, Janet Maslin said that Fiennes "gleefully captures Lenny's sleaziness while also showing there is something about this schlockmeister that is worth saving, despite much evidence to the contrary."[26] As for Bassett, she felt that the character "looks great and radiates inner strength even without the bone-crunching physical feats to which she is often assigned."[26] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Strange Days Bigelow's "magnum opus" and credited Bassett's "standout" performance, describing her as "fierce, funny and heart rending".[37] In contrast, Sizemore and Lewis were considered miscast in their roles.[38][39] At the 22nd Saturn Awards, Bassett won Best Actress and Bigelow became the first woman to win the Best Director award.[40]
Retrospectively, the film's critical standing has improved. Roger Ebert's correspondent Michael Mirasol felt that Strange Days had some obvious weaknesses, including a dialogue that is too polished for its setting, but nevertheless judged its "devotion to its characters, its remarkable use of POVs to create its consistent atmosphere of apprehension and excitement, and most of all, its fearlessness."[23] In 2009, Drew Morton of the Pajiba website considered Strange Days an "extremely underappreciated film" and "the best piece of cyberpunk to grace celluloid since Ridley Scott's Blade Runner."[41] Strange Days also garnered a small cult following, who felt that the film has been overlooked by a casual mass audience and misguided critics.[42]
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 67% with an average rating of 6.5/10, based on reviews from 55 critics. The website's consensus states: "Strange Days struggles to make the most of its futuristic premise, but what's left remains a well-directed, reasonably enjoyable sci-fi fantasy."[43] On Metacritic, it holds a weighted average score of 66 of out 100, based on 30 reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[44] Audiences surveyed by CinemaScore gave the film a grade "B" on a scale of A+ to F.[45]
Home media[edit]
Strange Days was released on VHS in the United States by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on April 2, 1996.[46] A special widescreen THX LaserDisc was released in the United States on May 22, 1996. The LaserDisc's special features included a one-hour lecture about how the opening scene was filmed, two deleted scenes, a music video for "Selling Jesus" directed by Kathryn Bigelow, the original teaser and theatrical trailers, and photo galleries of storyboards and production stills.[47] On September 28, 1999, the film was released on DVD in the United States,[48] containing all the features from the LaserDisc version, except for the music video and photo galleries.[49] The film was released on Blu-ray in Germany on April 23, 2015 by Koch Media, containing all the features from the LaserDisc version except the photo galleries.[50] The Blu-ray was released in the United Kingdom on September 25, 2017 by Mediumrare Entertainment.[51]