It’s December 1999 and these are, indeed, strange days. There’s continuous mayhem in the streets of Los Angeles, and there’s a new technology that allows the recording and playback of actual experiences – virtual reality that’s recorded and played back directly from your cerebral cortex, using a rubber thing that sits on your head. The technology is illegal, and since L.A. is now pretty much a police state, purveyors of such entertainment, like Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), must work underground.
Lenny is a disgraced former cop who’s a decent guy. He doesn’t deal in snuff (virtual reality involving the death or the person doing the recording), as he’s just out to make a semi-honest living. “I’m the Santa Claus of the sub-conscious,” he tells his clients, and he makes extensive personal use of the technology as well. His main recreation is playing back disks he recorded with his former girlfriend, Faith (Juliette Lewis), who has since left him for a scummy music producer.
When a friend is killed, leaving behind a scandalous recording, Lenny is tossed into a web of intrigue. There’s a racially-explosive killing by cops, a vicious murderer of women on the loose, and someone’s after Lenny. With the grudging help of his friend “Mace” Mason (Angela Bassett), Lenny tries to get to the bottom of all this before someone gets killed.
Strange Days has a credible look and feel. This was heavily influenced, and perhaps somewhat skewed, by the early 1990s L.A. riots, but it’s not too difficult to imagine the world turning out this way. Same goes for the characters. This is a self-centred, uptight, not particularly happy lot – exactly what you’d expect in a police state heading in the direction of collapse. Lenny is a decent fellow, even if his life has gone somewhat off-track. The other troubled folks we encounter are also reasonably well-rounded characters.
There are two mysteries that keep us interested, and one of the fun aspects of Strange Days is trying to figure out whether or not they are connected. While its image of 1999 Los Angeles didn’t exactly come true, the film’s exploration of alienation in modern society is on the mark. Ralph Fiennes gives an intelligent performance, Angela Bassett is strong and appealing, and Juliette Lewis effectively portrays a very sad young woman.
It’s no classic, but Strange Days is a successful story of mystery and lost love with a sci-fi twist.
