Strange Days
Directed by Kathryn Bigelow
- crime
- science fiction
- thriller
The story
In the last days of 1999, ex-cop turned street hustler Lenny Nero receives a disc which contains the memories of the murder of a prostitute. With the help of bodyguard Mace, he starts to investigate and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of murder, blackmail and intrigue.
What it’s like
Restless night-time Los Angeles on the last night of 1999, all sodium glare, wet asphalt, and neon bleeding into fog, with a feverish millennial dread that builds as the clock runs down. The camera is mostly handheld and close, pushing through crowds and crowding faces, while the wired first-person memory recordings shift into a dreamy, overexposed blur that makes the viewer doubt what they are seeing. The score and soundtrack lean on driving rock and hip-hop, with sudden silences that feel like a held breath. Pacing is fast and jittery, with the story's anxieties tightening into a feverish, sweaty paranoia. An ex-cop turned hustler is pulled into an ever-deeper spiral of corruption and his own guilt, and the arc is about a man who has spent years looking away finally forced to look. Intensity is high: explicit sexual content and nudity, a rape and a murder shown through recorded memories, graphic violence, and police brutality that lands hard and unsparingly. Not gentle. For viewers who want cyberpunk noir, neon-soaked suspense, and a dark, unsettling tour of a city on the edge.
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