Strange Days
With Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D’Onofrio, Glenn Plummer, Brigitte Bako, and Richard Edson.
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To me, it’s a toss-up whether these dreams have to do with Strange Days or Seven or the O.J. Simpson trial and its countless spin-offs. The objection will be raised that the Simpson hoopla is about something real. I suppose it is, but considering how much of the rest of the news–that is, news of the rest of the world–has been suspended or omitted for the sake of “in-depth” coverage of O.J., it’s pretty clear that this hoopla is supposed to stand mythologically and emotionally for everything that’s being excluded. In other words, real or not, the story plays out in our heads like a symbolic drama–like a big-budget movie, in short, except that it’s much longer. And it’s meant to signify much more to us than our own lives possibly could. Whichever side one takes on the issues, the O.J. trial and verdict are made to carry such overbearing weight that the remainder of our national life–including daily instances of murder and wife beating–is diminished.
It could be countered, of course, that Strange Days is anything but escapist. Unlike Seven, which is making lots more money, Strange Days is about the corruption and racism of the LA police force–though the worst offenders are miraculously exposed and brought to justice in a matter of minutes, thereby terminating a full-scale race riot in seconds. It’s also about urban blight, media escapism, soulless thrill seeking, even the viewer’s own guilty voyeurism. In fact, that’s what I find most objectionable about this movie–the hypocritical pretense that it’s doing and saying something serious.
Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes, who’s again failed to master an American accent), still grieving the loss of his rock-singer girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis) to her evil agent (Michael Wincott), was once a cop but now traffics in black-market “clips” (the aforementioned sensory discs). Unlike this movie, however, Lenny refuses to deal in real or ersatz representations of rape and murder–which is what makes him the hero. A prostitute and porn actress (Brigitte Bako) who’s previously done recordings for him is running for her life, trying to get Lenny’s help and warning him that Faith is in danger as well. Before she can explain, she’s whisked away by the plot, and later Lenny finds himself sampling a playback of her brutal rape and murder. Other characters include Lenny’s two confidants–another ex-cop (Tom Sizemore) and a security driver named Mace (Angela Bassett), whose husband Lenny helped arrest when he was still a cop–and a radical rap artist named Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) who’s found brutally murdered shortly before the story begins, on December 30.
