Now that the end of the year is upon us again—already—I
thought I’d talk about a flick that just so happens to involve New Year
celebrations, and happens to be an enjoyable but little-known cyberpunk
thriller from the 90s. It’s not Stranger Things, but it is Strange Days.
Scripted by James Cameron, in the days before he was trying
to tax SFX budgets to their limit and spending a decade between films, Strange
Days is set in the impossibly distant future of 1999, just four years from it’s
release. It’s a very early 90s vision of the late 90s, where LA has become an
even bigger urban hellhole, social issues are on the rise, and of course,
implants that can record a person’s vision and sensations are now the rage.
It’s clearly influenced by noted cyberpunk writer William Gibson, with all the
technological prescience that’s both rings true (like random personal videos
being consumed) and dated (they’re all transported in person, of course, for
lack of any internet).
The story concerns a black market dealer called Lenny,
played by Lenny Nero, who ends up being tangled in a stranger murder recorded
on one of the aforementioned implants. Teaming up with a friend of his, played
by Angela Basset, they soon end up delving into a net of police conspiracy,
underground rap, and creepy technology, all in the backdrop of the runup to the
21st century. It’s pretty damn densely plotted, moreso than some of
Cameron’s more recent works. Some of it might feel slow at first, but as it
picks up, it does a pretty decent job of drawing you into the sort of dark
tech-noir sort of thing that Cameron launched his career with in The Terminator.
Not all of the writing is smooth—there’s a lot of opening
exposition that feels clunky, which is something you can notice with Cameron. There’s
glimpses into the underground music scene of LA that are…very mid-90s, and later on we meet an influential rapper whose
lyrics, erm, don’t really match the supposed messiah-like touch he’s meant to
have. Though speaking of music—watch out for a line near the end that made for
a famous Fatboy Slim sample. That’ll take you back.
Still, for those who were alive or grew up in that decade,
you can see it as an amusing nostalgic little touch—along with all the
excitement for the year 2000. Back then, surprisingly many folk worried that the
Millennium Bug would destroy us all, or that the Earth would be frozen over by
the future of 2010. That sort of uncertainty about the future, even with the
excitement of a new decade, century, and millennium, certainly resonates here,
so I must admit it did draw me in that little bit more.
And appropriate for it’s themes, there’s a lot of
appropriately drab urban decay mixed in with the shinier parts of Los Angeles,
that all adds to the scifi noir feel it’s aiming for. Not as atmospheric as the
first Terminator, but all things considered, it gets the job done. The
first-person views of the implant recordings were ambitious cinematographically
for the time, and still hold up even after the likes of Hardcore Henry. That
sort of perspective definitely ties into some suitably disturbing moments in
the film that showcase the implications that sort of tech would really have.
So that’s just a little overview of an underrated little
flick you might want to watch if you need something with your New Year’s
celebrations. 2017’s been a hell of a year, and despite what Spielberg
predicted in his NBC TV movie forty-one years ago, we haven’t quite reached the
point of all consuming synthetic food in ravaged landscapes—that might be left
until 2027. Either way, I’ll see you guys in 2018…
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