The second law of thermodynamics states that the entropy of a system, or the inability for a system to do its work, will increase over time, eventually reaching a maximum at equilibrium.
Now, to me, that’s a lot of gobbledygook; I just looked it up on Wikipedia.
The Irish poet W.B. Yeats had a much simpler and more understandable way of saying it: things fall apart.
Anything that’s set in motion will gradually break down, till there is no motion at all.
Love fades, food rots, and our bodies continue their downward slide.
So what the hell, let’s make a movie!
Strange Days is a film made in 1995 set around New Year’s Eve 1999, a time when the country is basically going down the crapper.
Projections about the very near future are never a good idea, especially when they’re as radical as the ones in
Strange Days.
Granted, they’re not that the shape of the earth has changed or that we’re living in pods in outer space, but their just extreme enough to make people in 2008 snicker a little.
A particularly funny moment was when there was a lament that gasoline was over $3.00/gallon.
It technically qualifies as a sci-fi movie, and here’s why.
Central to the plot are illegal devices called SQUIDs.
A SQUID is a device that goes over your head like a hairnet, and when you plug a mini-disc-like cartridge into the remote device wirelessly connected to it, you can have an audiovisual/tactile experience in first person, as if you are there.
The cartridge is a recording taken from the cerebral cortex of someone also wearing a SQUID.
People get hooked on it like drugs, and like some drugs, overuse of it makes you paranoid.
Strange Days’s main character is a dealer of these black market devices named Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes).
He’s an ex-cop now working on the wrong side of the law, but still basically a good person.
Also in the story are his friend Mace (Angela Bassett), a tough-as-nails limo driver, Max (Tom Sizemore), his P.I. buddy, and Faith (Juliette Lewis), a singer/hooker who happens to be the (only) one that got away.
The trouble starts when Lenny gets sent a mysterious “black jack” cartridge (the SQUID equivalent of a snuff film) depicting the brutal rape and murder of Iris, a hooker friend of Faith’s.
Iris indicated that Faith might be in danger before she died, and because of his obsession with Faith, Lenny gets involved.
Strange Days is very story-driven, so I won’t reveal much more than that.
The screenplay, written by James Cameron of
Titanic fame, is smart and tightly wound, even though it doesn’t make sense in places and is slightly ridiculous.
However, I’m not sure who
Strange Days thinks it’s appealing to.
It’s too violent, disturbing and swear-ridden to appeal to sci-fi geeks, and it’s too cerebral and futuristic to appeal to the meatheads that would like the guns and bad people in it.
In the end, it winds up being a jack of all trades, master of none.
Acting is competent from all involved, especially Angela Bassett.
It strikes me that she would be
perfect for the role of Storm in
X-Men, and would do an infinitely better job than Halle Berry.
Strange Days has far too long of a beginning, though, and consequentially clocks in at almost 2 and a half hours.
The director (Kathryn Bigelow) could have trimmed the fat without taking out the punch or grit, which the movie had in spades.
It was a little too needlessly graphic and pessimistic for my taste, and I didn’t like the anti-society message the movie (perhaps subconsciously) seemed to present.
It had a great premise, and the screenplay was intricate and intelligent with fantastic dialogue, though the plot holes eventually made it look a little like Swiss cheese.
The cinematography comes from an age when CGI wasn’t the thing that it is now, but in this case, it’s a good thing.
The set and costume designs (and lack of CGI) make the world the characters exist in eerily like our own, but fast-forwarded enough to still make it escapist.
But overall, the problems
Strange Days has make it difficult to recommend very highly.
It’s definitely not for everyone.
Iconic lines:
“Cheer up.
The world’s gonna end in ten minutes, anyway.”
“The issue’s not whether you’re paranoid.
The issue’s whether you’re paranoid enough.”
“Two million years of human evolution and that’s the best you can come up with?”
22 Rating: 5
Particle Man
6 comments:
My book says that the film's opening scene is worth special mentioning.
So what prompted you to watch this, PM? I always thought it looked like a cast-off 90's oddity (which, according to you, it is).
i dunno. ever since it came out it looked interesting to me, and when it came out, it didn't even seem that far-fetched. putting myself back in that time period now, having watched it, it still doesn't. people didn't dress radically different, and the way they talked was pretty normal, except for some futuristic jargon things. but i guess i was just browsing Netflix one day and was like, "oh yeah, i wanted to see that when i was 15. i'll put that on my queue."
So, I have question about something that might be a contradiction and might not, but I'd need more information to understand. How is it that the screenplay is both "tightly wound" and "doesn’t make sense in places"; or, as it's put elsewhere, "intricate" and yet containing several plot holes?
i don't think those are contradictions. they would be if i said that the entire thing were both intricate and had plot holes, or were tightly wound and didn't make sense. the thing that needs to be highlighted is my use of the phrase "in places." all of those things are just in places, and none of them are consistent through the whole movie.
Ok, I can see that. I think the "in places" is what wasn't apparent to me when I read the review.
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