Strange Days (film): An excellent movie that almost no one saw
This movie didn't even manage to recoup 20% of its budget and nearly ended the career of director Kathryn Bigelow - who has since gone on to win an Oscar. Despite having James Cameron involved in both the writing and production, this film kind of came and went without anyone even noticing.
How can you have a film with a better-than-average sci-fi storyline, have a heavy-hitter like James Cameron on staff and feature incredible performances by Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and one of my favorite not-so-appreciated stars, Tom Sizemore and still not get noticed?
There are a lot of theories out there. One was that people weren't generally interested in sci fi in the 90's and this film was considered (and is) incredibly violent. Others said that the frequent use of point of view cameras (which was necessary because of the overall plot) was considered annoying - which is something i can relate to as The Blair Witch Project's filming made me feel nauseous in the theater.
The plot starts out easy enough to understand. The year is 1999 and the world has gone down the usual route of chaos and lack of government power has made many parts of the world, especially Los Angeles (where the film is set) a kind of war zone. The latest addiction are these films that are recorded using something called a SQUID (that is placed on the users head) that is capable not just of recording audio and video, but also the sensations the person wearing it is experiencing at the time they filmed it. Obviously, some less-than-innocent "films" are the most popular ones in the underworld.
This might be another reason why this movie was shelved by many critics. Feminist groups would probably have a real problem with the fact that the most sought after SQUID films are ones involving sex and even murder and rape. I can certainly understand why people would have a problem with this but to be fair to the film-makers, this is a very small part of the movie and perhaps it was just a statement on the part of the writers about how parts of humanity are not just flawed, but also quite twisted in their desires.
The major plot of the story is that our hero, Lenny Nero (played by Fiennes) is a SQUID film dealer despite being an ex-cop (yeah, i know this cop turned underworld dealer isn't exactly new) and he discovers a police conspiracy that could get them in a lot of trouble and of course, the corrupt police of 1999 can not allow him to make this information public. What we end up with is a fast-paced movie with fantastic actors and a compelling storyline. I simply can not understand why it was not a blockbuster. Perhaps we were too puritan back in the mid 90's.
In Cameron's movies the enemy is external or "idealized"(aliens, robots, rich smug bastard in Titanic, vietkongs in...Rambo II, yes he was a co-writer, common greed in Avatar) while Kathryn goes straight into the hart of darkness: the human shitty society itself. After a razzle-dazzle trip you always are forced to see how evil is pulling off the mask and it's always the one that you don't want it to be.
Probably strong female characters are the reason while these two hooked up.
:)
This movie has Bigelow's signature all over it: camera in the eyes of characters, pumped up adrenaline to the max with "shoot from the hip" style, reality kicking you in the gut asking what a hell you are figting for while you are chased or you are chasing someone or something....Point Break, Blue Steel, even The Hurt Locker gives you these sensations inspite of the different speed.
Yes , the screenplay is Cameron's but I bet he never imagine it like Kathryn did.
@gooddream the 90s were no different from the 80s in terms of movie acceptability, so am a bit surprised myself (haven't seeing it either)
Hiii..gooddream
Great Post with perfect review.
My 100 % upvote for this post.
It is a very wonderful film and very beautiful I will see it with certainty
Thank you my dear
In fact as you mention this there are many that were not appreciated at the time by the social condition as a step with citizen Kane in 1941 and the marketing of the same cinema as there were cases that were overshadowed by the top box office given the case in Cadena Perpetua in 1994 that was erased by Forrest Gum and Blade runner in 1982 because that same month they released Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Mad Max 2: The Warrior of the Road and TRON. Probably too much science fiction for an overflowing public. Maybe if in that time they had approved the cannabis as now they would not need the 3d glasses and they would not criticize them so hard hahaha
"I simply can not understand why it was not a blockbuster"
I saw this in the cinema in the UK. It was rated 18, which immediately meant that young sci-fi fans were excluded. The trailers were grungy as shit, as befitting a noir movie.
In modern times, since the death of Humphrey Bogart, I can't remember a movie being a massive hit if it was also a noir movie: maybe "Body Heat," but even then. The Coen's have had minor noir hits (eg "Blood Simple"), but minor, never big budget like this.
Bigelow wanted to make noir movies, because the macho amorality of the characters fascinated her. Many of her first movies were genre hybrids, of which noir was a definite component, whether it be "The Loveless" or "Near Dark" or "Blue Steel." This movie was the culmination of her noir fascination, and it was joined as a hybrid with sci-fi, James Cameron's personal favorite genre. The two exes, joined at the hip, making a movie hybrid of their favorite genres.
I believe it is the noir element that poisoned the movie for audiences, who watched the trailer and thought: "there is nobody in that miserable movie I could possibly feel for, or want to watch."
Personally, I effin love this movie. Bigelow was always fascinated by violence, still is, her Osama Bin Laden movie being the culmination of her fascination. Every movie she's ever made is about violence, and how violence relates to human nature.
This James Cameron script was perfect for her because it has Lenny, Philip K Dick style, as outside reality, selling reality, so violence can be examined through many different eyes and perspectives, depending on who makes, who sells and who watches the squid movies. Bigelow's love-hate relationship to violence, more love than hate, also had her work for a year developing a special camera to capture first person experiences. Shortly after this movie, obviously inspired by it, Prodigy's infamous "Smack My Bitch Up" music video came out, and at the end, when they reveal the filmmaker of first-person violence is secretly a woman, I've always thought that was a direct reference to Kathryn Bigelow and this movie lol!
Bigelow had an eye for sleazeball noir types, and to have D'Onofrio, Fichtner, Wincott, Sizemore and Sizemore's wig all in the same movie is pretty astonishing, the sleaze level at 11 out of 10. This is another, related, reason for the movie's failure, in that the characters look so sleazy, and the depicted world so unrelentingly violent, that it feels of a piece with an '80s exploitation B-movie, such as "The Exterminator," in which a dude runs another dude through a meat grinder.
On an arty level though, this movie is a cut above. Not only does it examine the nature of violence, and how we seek to passively consume it after the fact, but it views it through the varying prisms that trigger it, such as sexism, racism, capitalism, as well as the underlying human instinct for excitement and adrenaline beneath those motivations.
I love this movie, but for a budding filmmaker who is in business, rather than in art, I'd advise avoiding the noir genre. :)
I haven't seen this, will definitely check it out. Isn't Bladerunner noir-ish? Maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, though, or maybe it wasn't a hit when it came out.
"Blade Runner" is indeed noirish, which is why it was an almighty flop, despite being one of the best movies ever made.
Audiences have a feel for the downbeat anti-heroic nature of noir, and if they taste that kind of despair in a trailer, they avoid the movie like a plague.
The key to noir is that it thrived amongst folks who had fought world wars, and who no longer believed in fantasy. But the natural state of human beings is to dream, so once the trauma of war was over, so was noir. :(
This movie was awesome, saw it in the theaters as a shorty. It's amazing how back then this tech seemed so unattainable, but fast foward to modern day and the invention of Google Glass and wearables - we're kinda at the precursor of the capabilities displayed in this movie. People knock on this film alot, which is understandable as execution is off sometimes. But alot of the social commentary expressed in this film (black lives vs blue lives, addiciton to technology,top down corruption) was ahead of it's time. 👍
This movie was really awesome and cool with a great sci-fi premise. But I feel the ending let it down a bit because it got really derivative, cheesy and over-the-top by the end. It's still an irrepressibly 90's flick that feels cemented in the zeitgeist of its decade; this coming from a child of the 2000's. Ha ha!
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I can attest to that, I have not seeing it either. I just might get it this weekend though based on your review