CYBER THRILLS GALORE


Elle Magazine
By Robert Ellsworth
Movie Review
1995



Los Angeles, the night before the millenium,has become a hellish vision of anarchy, marked by technological wornders, rampant violence and billows of atmospheric-steam-- hey this is Hollywood in this cyberfilm. Strange Days gangs rile and the police cruise around in armoured tanks. A hustler (Ralph Fiennes) hawks virtual-reality dreams to his clients via black market "clips." The ultimate in cyberthrills, "clips" are bits of someone else's reality, preserved on a digital recording that give the user a "virtual" experience -- be it sex, murder, armed robbery or a walk on the beach. Why stray from home when you can play back someone else's experience?

Like Blade Runner and every cyberpunk variation forward, Strange Days proffers an apocalyptic future featuring a cynical anti-hero, his femme fatale (Juliette Lewis) as a rock star named Faith, some corrupt cops and a stylistic grunge milieu. Add a chauffeur named Mace (deliciously played by Angela Bassett), throw in jabs at our media-wired culture, and you've got the ultimate post-modern pastiche.

What makes this film a cut above the rest is Katherine Bigelow's direction. Her vertiginous camera hurls us into the driver's seat, turning the audience into voyeurs. What may have been a tangled mess in anyone else's hands turns out to be a feverish feast of imagery of the subconscious. With a drier sense of humour and less sentimentality than the usual big budget blowout, Bigelow delivers two-and-a-half hours of adrenaline-pumping overkill. It may seem like a Blade Runner for the Nineties, but beneath its dazzle lurks a dark satire on our media-manipulated world. Strange days indeed.

 

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