Nothing quite like queueing up an old dystopian science fiction film only to learn you’re practically living in it. Creepily prescient, Strange Days (1995) is a grim cyberpunk noir that for all its sleazy nineties excess feels like it might have been shot last week.
Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) is a shifty ex-cop whose sketchy new vocation is selling “experiences” in the form of recorded memories — a next-level, immersive virtual reality that has developed a lucrative black market. Navigating the chaotic, mean streets of Los Angeles, “Lenny the Loser” is just trying to make ends meet, while pining away in “playback” for his halcyon days with sexy musician ex Faith (Juliette Lewis). Lenny’s on-the-make existence is complicated when Faith’s friend Iris (Brigitte Bako) reaches out for help, roping him into a mystery that — motivated by concern for Faith — he clumsily wades into, aided by his friends, private investigator Max (Tom Sizemore) and chaffeur/security contractor Mace (Angela Bassett). Forced to confront the human cost of his dubious new livelihood, Lenny slowly peels away at a conspiratorial mystery that, if exposed, will have explosive political consequences.
Naturally, Strange Days doesn’t get every detail right: its primary speculative premise (the “SQUID” technology that makes VR a full sensory experience) is a smidge…aspirational, and the film makes the ballsy decision to set itself in 1999 in order to capitalize on apocalyptic Y2K sentiment. But in almost every other respect, the world of Strange Days bears an uncanny resemblance to 2020s America: its officious police-state corruption, escalated racial tensions, stochastic terrorism, rape culture, self-interested hedonism. Even the vicarious memory-selling business resonates with the pervasive attention economy of our side-hustle internet, including (importantly) its sleazier elements. Not that the film’s mission is predictive; indeed, it’s more likely the film was aiming to reflect the veiled, violent undercurrents of the nineties in a cautionary way. But it’s remarkable how much it got right about the dark future we ended up in.
That said, what makes the film work is its noir-mystery intricacy, and the smart, thoughtful was it wraps that story around real people, whose backstories emerge in perfectly clocked fashion to give their interactions increasing context. Fiennes, Bassett, and Sizemore are superb in the key roles, while the rest of the cast — Bako, Lewis, Vincent D’Onofrio, Richard Edson, William Fichtner, and Glenn Plummer, among others — effectively complement them. Unfortunately, one of the few things Strange Days does not quite predict is the nihilistic atmosphere of unaccountability that pervades our scandal-weary reality. The film’s world may be absolutely horrible, but in the end, the truth still matters there, which makes its semi-Hollywood ending a little too shiny for the journey. A bleaker, Chinatown-like moment at the end might have perfected it, then, but overall, this intense film — co-written by James Cameron and Jay Cocks, and directed by Kathryn Bigelow — holds up impressively twenty-odd years after the fact.
