Movie Info
Movie Name: Strange Days
Studio: Lightstorm Entertainment
Genre(s): Sci-Fi/Fantasy/Mystery/Suspense
Release Date(s): October 13, 1995
MPAA Rating: R
It’s the end of the world as we know it!
It is December 31, 1999. The world is turning into a big party. When one of the most popular rappers is killed, a SQUID user (a VR device…Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) and former officer named Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) discovers it is all a cover-up. Haunted by memories of his relationship with Faith (Juliette Lewis), Lenny debates what to do with what he has found and if it could be a bigger conspiracy than he thought. With help from his friend Lornette “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett), Lenny is out to find a killer as the clock ticks closer and closer to the year 2000.
Strange Days was directed by Katheryn Bigelow and written by James Cameron and Steve Charles-Jaffe. It was released in 1995…only four years before its futuristic date, but was a financial flop. Its cyberpunk theme has sense gained some popularity and it has developed into a bit of a cult hit.
SQUID technology…the source of all the problems
The movie does bring up a lot of interesting ideas, but it also was released in a slew of cyberpunk themed stories. Even the William Shattner story TekWar (and its comic counterpart TekWorld) dealt with addition to VR. VR was the big hit at the time and everything seemed to talk about VR and its possibilities.
The movie has a good cast with Ralph Fiennes as the destroyed cop, Tom Sizemore as his bodyguard friend, and Juliette Lewis as Fiennes obsession. The movie features small rolls for Vincent D’Onofrio and William Fichtner as the dirty cops and gravelly voiced Michael Wincott as the record label owner that has stolen his girlfriend from him. The movie also has a nice performance from Angela Bassett as Mace who helps keep Lenny on the straight and narrow.
Ain’t no party like a 2000 party!
What is fun (then and now) is the 1999 setting. In 1995 it was a close future. Other than the SQUID technology, the movie didn’t have much of a sci-fi aspect. Looking back on Strange Days however, it is fun to see a perception of what December 31, 199 would look like. Things like the Y2K bug weren’t even a glimmer in this movie and that was all the buzz. Watching Strange Days is a sci-fi movie set in the past, and presents a whole new vision for the movie.
