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86 out of 107 people found the following comment useful :- Mindblowing experience and the best millennium movie of them all, 26 May 2003 Author: Mika Pykäläaho (bygis80@hotmail.com) from Järvenpää, Finland
When I first saw "Point break" I thought that Kathryn Bigelow made the only action masterpiece of her career but there she was only four years later with a magnificent story written by James Cameron and an unforgettable classic called "Strange days". Ralph Fiennes has never been as cool as he was when the guy played Lenny Nero and Juliette Lewis was almost too sexy to be true. The whole movie is a remarkable experience. I saw it couple of days after the turning of 2000 and I was totally stunned because I expected a silly little b-scifi flick. What I got was a powerful first rate mystery thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat the whole bloody time. I just recently watched it again and was afraid that the movie would let me down when I've seen it once but on the contrary, like wine this one only got better with age. What a shame "Strange days" never got the recognition it obviously deserves. This is a cult movie, at best, but the fact that it doesn't have a placing in the IMDb top 250 is a huge injustice. Definitely the best of all millennium movies. 10/10
68 out of 82 people found the following comment useful :- "Are we impressed yet?", 12 January 2000 Author: The_Movie_Cat from England
The answer being, of course, yes I am impressed.What a thoroughly enjoyable film Strange Days is. Fast-moving and occasionally violent, it's not high art but then neither is it dumbed-down fodder and it has much to commend it. The central plot revolves around an ex-cop (Fiennes, doing a - to my ears anyway - convincing American accent) peddling FBI technology on the black market. The SQUID technology (Super conducting QUantum Interface Device) electronically absorbs information from the central cortex and allows users to experience the thrill of another's sensations - be it murder, sex, robbery, etc. Of course, this central idea, while fascinating, does derive pretty much directly from a Twilight Zone episode. Were this a "classic" Zone episode from the b/w era, then people would have picked it up straight away and the game would be over. As it is, the inspiration comes from one of the colour Twilight Zone episodes which had even less viewers than Strange Days and so the movie can rest assured it is safe in obscurity. (Give up? Okay, it was episode 23, season three, 1989, "The Mind of Simon Foster". I'm an anorak, I know these things).But whether such were intentional is pretty much irrelevant as the magpie technique of this film takes from many texts and builds something greater than the parts. One of the two greatest science fiction films of the 90s - the other being the excellent "Twelve Monkeys" - both have built-in sell-by dates by fixing their time period in a very near locale. Hence while the supposed date of Monkeys is long past at 98, this film now becomes a historical document as of New Year's Eve 1999. But then does it follow that we will stop watching 2001 in 2002? Hopefully not, and Strange Days is one that too deserves to be revisited in years to come.The reason why I commend it most is its rewarding political stance. The development that gets adhered onto the "Squid" plot directly references the beating of Rodney King. Such contemporary referencing may again date it as quickly as the '99 setting, but then we also have Angela Bassett as a very empowered, yet caring black woman. Note how she and Lenny have exchanged traditional gender roles in this film, yet this feels not like some "macho woman" schtick but genuine characterisation. Lenny is a likeable, wisetalking street peddler who spends the film as a human punchbag. Gone is the cliched jaw-breaking action man role for him, instead his only retort to violence is "I'll give you my Rolex". This sense of, if you like, PC-ness, can also be evidenced with the lesbian couple kissing as the year 2000 breaks, or the (one scene only, admittedly) appearance of a disabled man as a central character.However, the boundary-pushing elements of this movie are tainted by the appearance of Juliet Lewis in the film. A capable actress, her only role appears to be as a receptacle for various men's sexual needs or to gratuitously expose her breasts on multiple occasions. This is a great shame, and a pity that a film which has such high intentions in almost every other area should fall back on unfortunate portrayal.The dialogue is pitched just about right without being particularly clever, though occasionally it stalls. "You're like a goddamn cruise missile, targetted on making it", Fiennes tells Faith (Lewis) at one point, managing to keep a straight face. Later, Bassett must endure having to say "These are used emotions. It's time to trade them in" and not use her gun on the scriptwriter. When the credits do roll, it's perhaps no surprise that James Cameron was the co-writer, as its slight perfunctory, by-the-numbers stance often reminds one of the machinations of "Titanic". Tom Sizemore as Max is every inch the one-dimensional Cameron "character", while plot twists sometimes feel heavily engineered. Maybe Jay Cocks is responsible for the script's more "human" feel, with particular note going to the moral debate of whether or not to expose the LAPD's murder of an influential black rapper. The two leads debate (internally, as well as verbally, a first for a Cameron movie) the implications and the possible consequences of such an action. Despite its flirtation with the mainstream, Strange Days is a film that dares to pervert the traditional course of Hollywood into a future that is worth seeing. Perhaps predictably, it made little impact at the box office.
59 out of 70 people found the following comment useful :- Terrific science fiction offering., 17 May 2003 Author: Jonathon Dabell (barnaby.rudge@hotmail.co.uk) from Wakefield, England
Strange Days is a truly astonishing science fiction offering, part scripted by James Cameron and directed with relentless panache by maverick lady-director Kathryn Bigelow. It presents a depressing and bleak, yet worryingly probable, view of the near future, and hooks its story threads upon the impending millennium eve celebrations. Although December 31st, 1999, has been and gone since the making of this movie, it is a credit to the makers that this film still offers a plausible viewpoint about where the world might be at in the next decade or so.Ralph Fiennes seems initially miscast, but soon wins over the audience as Lenny Nero, a sleazy racketeer who sells "memories" captured on some form of disk, similar to virtual reality but recorded from real experiences rather than computerised ones. He is desperately trying to get back with his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis), but she doesn't want him as she has hooked up with a music producer named Philo (Michael Wincott). Lenny acquires two disturbing tapes, one showing the rape and murder of a woman, the other showing a racially motivated slaying, and before he knows it he is on the run from the culprits who want to kill him before he exposes their crimes. The only person he can trust is his best friend, lady bodyguard Mace (Angela Bassett). To complicate matters further, his ex-girlfriend Faith seems to know something about the disks, and may either be involved in the crimes or at great risk from those responsible.Bassett is the real star here, in the role of a lifetime as a morally strong and physically stronger heroine. Lewis plays the same old white trash girl she has played many times, but at least she has the experience to bring total conviction to the role. The production values are incredibly high, especially the party at the end which seems to realistically convey an entire city celebrating in the streets. The plot unfolds slowly, but this is a strength rather than a criticism. Each new development slots into place beautifully, and the audience is given time to get into the characters and the situations (which, in too many movies, we are not allowed to do since the pace is often too frenetic).Strange Days is challenging and aggressive and frequently disturbing. It is also inventive and exciting and ingeniously staged. It is simply a terrific science film which any devotee of the genre absolutely must see.
61 out of 83 people found the following comment useful :- Sizzling Sci-Fi/Action Thriller, 15 October 1999 Author: The_Core from Seattle, WA. USA
"Strange Days" literally has something for everyone. Science fiction, violence, peace, romance, comedy, tragedy, action, you name it -- it's in this film, and it's done with class and intelligence. I agree that this one is destined to become a cult classic. However, be prepared for one of the edgiest, most violent and emotionally exhausting films you've ever seen (the first three minutes of the film make it very clear what you can expect from the rest). There are at least five climactic scenes toward the end, which must break some kind of record. After the movie's over, you may feel like you've just been cooked in a vat of boiling oil... but luckily, you'll be perfectly well-done, not burned to a crisp. 10/10.
39 out of 50 people found the following comment useful :- One of my all time faves!, 15 March 2001 Author: Daywalker from Germany
Unfortunately, this film failed at the box-offices, although it´s one of the greatest masterpieces of the 90s. The first time I saw "Strange Days" was about five years ago, and then over and over again. If you think Ralph Fiennes is only able to play sensitive and problematic characters watch this: it´s his most unusual, but one of the best performances in his career - a performance of a coolness you only would expect from Samuel L. Jackson. Angela Bassett is one of the toughest women cinema has ever seen and Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Glenn Plummer, William Fichtner - every single role is casted perfectly..."Strange Days" is thriller, drama and big city ballad in one piece. I can´t remember any movie that reflects the philosophy of life of Generation X better than this one. Lenny deals with the "Squids" which are the experiences and emotions of men saved on a mini disc. Emotions as a product, a drug - a compensation of modern life for the growing loneliness and anonymity. The only possibility for weak persons like Lenny to feel real. A movie like "Fight Club" wouln´t have been possible without "Strange Days"; other releases like "The Cell" or even Scorsese´s "Bringing out the dead" copied the incomparable make. Although this film is older than six years it hasn´t lost anything explosive effects, what is connected with the video clip style this movie has, which gives "Strange Days" a touch of being ageless. The two most brilliant scenes are the opening sequence - the robbery in the Chinese restaurant - and the showdown down in the streets at the millenium party. Also the soundtrack (Deep Forest, Peter Gabriel, Skunk Anansia, Strange Fruit...) is one of the best I´ve ever heard, what makes "Strange Days" an unforgettable experience for every watcher. (10/10)
36 out of 46 people found the following comment useful :- Cameron wrote and it shows, 24 January 2000 Author: Anders Åslund (anders.aslund@xpress.se) from Karlstad, Sweden
Yep. It sure shows that Cameron has laid his hand on this film. It has a superb plot, great timing and a spectacular ending - one of the best ever, I might add.Just about everything you see in this film adds to the momentum. Just look in the background. There is always something going on, someone getting arrested or stealing something or burning something... all of it enhances the doomsday feeling you get when watching.I also find Fiennes' acting just short of perfect. His face, his gestures and his entire being reeks of the sordid life his character leads. To cast him was genius. Lewis, Sizemore, Bassett and Wincott perform excellently as well - but it's really Fiennes that just makes this film happen.Do you want to see something unusual for a change? Do you long to see a believable sf-story for once, even despite the fact that the events of the film took place in 1999? And do you yearn for a sensational film made to make you really feel something? See Strange Days.
29 out of 35 people found the following comment useful :- Engaging, but Uneven, 3 July 2000 Author: diffusionx
Strange Days is an interesting film, with a great premise. It also happens to be well-executed, for the most part. The LA of the future (well, future back when it was released in 1995) is quite dystopian in nature, and Strange Days manages to present all facets of that using Taxi Driver-influenced car rides through the city while observing the chaos on the streets. In many ways, Strange Days manages to create a real-life and convincing future, and it feels like a true place, with things going on independently of the events in the movie, rather than feeling like a movie set. Atmosphere aside, though, the movie has many strengths. The plot is intriguing, and it flows quite smoothly. A lot of the dialogue is really quite interesting and gives the movie a nice feel (not to mention the actors do a pretty good job with the material). The characters are three-dimension and interesting. While the beginning parts were somewhat disjointed (at least in terms of plot), they did serve as an excellent setup. When the movie was its best (during the middle parts) there is a frantic sense of urgency that really drives the picture along. It's a very entertaining movie, and it managed to form an emotional link with me - always a good sign.Unfortunately, it kind of goes downhill after that. Strange Days ends up resorting to awfully cliche ideas, complete with plot elements seen a million times in movies before. All of this mars what could have been a real classic film. It's too bad that Cameron and Cocks had to resort back to this, since the movie has so many strengths and so many great things that it could have built on. While the movie is still above average, it just isn't as superb as it could have been. Nonetheless, Strange Days succeeds on many levels and is well worth watching.
25 out of 36 people found the following comment useful :- I predict a riot!, 30 May 2005 Author: B-J-C (benjconway79@yahoo.co.uk) from Ipswich, England
It's amazing to see that ten years after this film was released, and five years after it was set, it has already started coming true. Young people with nothing better to do are attacking people at random in the street while it is recorded on their friend's cell phones and made available on their own 'black market' - the Internet, when it is used for such things.This is not a far cry from the plot of Strange Days, which centres around a technology called SQUID (another useless abbreviation which I don't remember what it means), where the wearer of a headset is able to relive experiences recorded by themselves or another person. You may be curious as to what it's like to go bungee jumping, to have risk-free sex in ways you couldn't in real life, or just to know what it's like under another person's skin. But everything has a bad use, and when people are able to replay memories of robbing a bank, committing a murder, committing a rape, or being killed, you can see where problems may arise.The story focuses on an ex-cop, now in the black market, dealing such 'clips' for recreation. When he receives a disturbing clip of a friend being raped and murdered, he realises that his punk-rock singer ex-girlfriend is in serious trouble. She's dumb, shallow and not easy to communicate with, especially when she's with her domineering boyfriend/boss/gangster. Is he a suspect? How much does she know? Where is the case heading? How many Rolexes does the protagonist actually carry with him?Another sub-plot centres around a controversial hip-hop artist who is murdered, the truth behind witch having foreseeable repercussions affecting society in a big way.I will say this; Strange Days is one of the most intense and wildly entertaining movies of the mid-nineties, and is certainly ahead of its time. Set in urban Los Angeles on the eve of the new millennium, the backdrop is loud and violent. Non-stop street riots, crime and arson are visible wherever one goes. It's physically and emotionally intense, almost over-the-top, and the director does a good job to set an atmosphere that can suck you in, even despite being confined to the current medium of video and audio.It may seem silly, but a major disappointment is that video technology is all we have to experience the film, and therefore the huge buzz the characters seem to get from SQUID can never be fully communicated. And for this reason, SQUID seems almost like a gimmick to appease sci-fi fans, and is by no means necessary for the film to work. Strange Days is not a sci-fi film. What it is is an exhilarating action/thriller with mystery, suspense and occasional humour thrown in as well. And there's a love story - can't do without that!
26 out of 38 people found the following comment useful :- Strange, Imaginative, Underrated Film, 10 May 2001 Author: MadReviewer from Oldwick, NJ
`Strange Days', one of many films made in the mid- to late-1990s that chose to dabble in `the near future of the year 2000', not only still looks good in the year 2001, but holds its own as a darn good film. A mix of `Blade Runner' film noir and uncomfortable realism, `Strange Days' has the audacity to tackle some disturbing topics and to actually tell an interesting tale in the process.Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a black market peddler of VR films - memory implants that are downloaded directly into the brain, allowing a person to vicariously sample someone else's experiences. The VR chips are like drugs, as people find the shared virtual experiences far better than those they find in their own lives. Lenny, who's both dealer and addict, is jarred back into reality when one of his friends is killed in vicious fashion - and the experience is captured on a VR film. Lenny comes to believe that his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis) may be next on the killer's list, so he begins his own search for the killer, partly to prevent anything bad from happening to Faith . . . and partly to impress Faith, and possibly win her back.Visually, `Strange Days' is terrific - it's hard to see how this film could be better in that department, even if James Cameron had directed the film himself. Some of the shots are astounding, such as a point-of-view clip of a man running along a rooftop and jumping to his death, then another simple clip of a woman on a date . . . it's part of a VR film `sampling', one that gives the audience a taste of why the characters in `Strange Days' think the films are so real, and so voyeuristic. Combine that with the way other things are filmed in `Strange Days' - the close-up look of Lenny's face as he samples past memories through VR films, the utter sweeping chaos of a riot as shot from high above - director Kathryn Bigalow creates a film that's visually mesmerizing. The designers and special effects guys really went to town, and should be given full credit for creating an outstanding, memorable look for `Strange Days'.Ralph Fiennes is awesome as Lenny - he's scummy and underhanded enough to keep himself from ever being a true hero, but he imbues Lenny with enough affable charm and backbone to make him likeable nonetheless. The rest of the cast falls short of Fiennes' great performance, though - Angela Bassett is decent as limo driver/armed muscle Mace, but Juliette Lewis is forgettable as Faith (and considering that she's supposed to be the love of Lenny's life, that drags the film down), and Tom Sizemore is more annoying than menacing as villain Max Peltier. The story, while highly original, is uneven as well - certain plot points get abandoned for no reason, and sometimes the characters' motivations really don't make any sense at all, save to advance the story into the next scene. The quick pacing of the film and its imaginative look help to gloss over these weaknesses, but they're still there, just the same.Inventive and daring, `Strange Days' is a solid movie, falling short of true greatness only because of the awkward execution of some brilliant ideas. Still, it's very entertaining, and definitely worth viewing, especially if you're a fan of sci-fi films. Grade: B/B+
12 out of 16 people found the following comment useful :- Strange Days........and a WOMAN directed this?!, 16 April 2009 Author: shortround8391 from United States
I guess James Cameron made action films better for all of us. Not just for the audience, but for the actors and the people involved in the movies too. He even smashed the gender barrier in the world of action movies and gave us the toughest females ever (Sarah Connor, Ellen Ripley, Helen Tasker, and Lindsay Brigman). And in 1995 he wrote up a screenplay that had a really fascinating story about the impending millennium and he called it "Strange Days". But instead of directing it, he decided to hand over the directing duties to his ex-wife Katheryn Bigelow, who made "Point Break" a few years before. And I've gotta say, women have really earned their place in action cinema, and we owe it to good ol' James Cameron.Strange Days tells the story taking place at the turn of the millennium from the 1000's to the 2000's and from 1999 to 2000. And due to the fact that it's a science fiction film, it features an outlawed device called SQUID that people can use with inserted discs to see, feel and experience an event that someone else already recorded. And a former cop named Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) who is now a hustler and seller of this device frequently uses the thing that he devotes his life to in order to experience the old memories of his ex-wife. And two other sub-plots emerge when he gets a disc that reveals corruption in the LAPD and another that shows a serial killer stalking, raping and murdering women. And it all finally converges at the end.Two years after playing the heartless Nazi Amon Goeth in "Schindler's List", Ralph Fiennes shows a completely different side of him in here. His character Lenny Nero is basically a vulnerable, weak guy who happens to be a lying, deceiving and vain hustler and due to his occasional silliness, it's almost impossible to see the negative aspects of his personality. He's also quite stubborn and a fool for love since his ex-wife chose fortune and fame over him. And Fiennes was perfectly cast here due to his skill of conveying several personality traits into a character. Also, his character is somewhat unique since he isn't really as macho and he seems to be more feminine due to his clothing style of silk and spandex. And we all know we can't keep ripping-off other movie characters to be make a profit, and "Strange Days" does the opposite. It does what it should do to get originality.My favorite acting performance in here was, without a doubt, Angela Basset as Mace. We all know that James Cameron constantly puts tough female characters in his films, but Mace in "Strange Days" takes the cake! She serves as Lenny's bodyguard and provides a couple cool fight scenes. Mace used to be an average woman and then her husband got arrested and when he started doing time, Mace completely changed and became more masculine, kinda like Sarah Connor between the first two Terminator movies.Tom Sizemore, who is a Bigelow regular, is great as Lenny's best pal and Juliette Lewis is great as Nero's ex-wife and she provides a realistic portrayal as the hot woman who wants nothing but money and could care less for morality and love. She also does some great singing in a couple scenes when she's performing with her band. And the dirty cop Steckler played by Vincent D'Onofrio before his Law and Order days, is played flawlessly and he's a pretty scary guy and he's willing to do anything to cover up what he and his partner did (although I'm not gonna tell exactly what in this review, you'll have to watch and find out)."Strange Days" has got it all; action, science fiction, suspense, and romance. The SQUID things were really something cool, original and creative, and it would be even better if it was really invented someday. This isn't really as action-packed as James Cameron's movies tend to be like, since it's got a different director, but the vision of Los Angeles is just remarkable, there's arson fires and riots packed in almost every scene and its just horrifying. Even though it hasn't happened yet, it makes you think and it makes you worry, especially if you're foolish enough to be living in LA.And remember, a woman actually made one of the greatest action adventures of all time. Katheryn Bigelow, we salute you.
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