Strange Days (1995)

 

100 best Science Fiction films

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#97. Strange Days (1995)

 

"You know how I know it's the end of the world? 'Cause everything's already been done."

n Max Peltier explaining to Lenny Nero that there’s just no point to anything anymore.

"This is your life! Right here! Right now! It's real time, you hear me? Real time, time to get real, not playback!”

n Lornette ‘Mace’ Mason telling Lenny Nero the exact opposite

 

Part of the fun of old SF novels or films is that when there are specific dates given for Future events, and as those dates pass, you get to compare what happened in the promised Future to what actually arrived in the Real-World. The two most famous examples would be George Orwell’s novel “1984” (first published in 1949) and Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick’s novel and film “2001: A Space Odyssey” (both 1968). I write this in 2025, and here I’m discussing a Future set in 1999.

 

Of course, the passing of these arbitrary dates doesn’t affect the relevance of the works. Even though, at least in the USA, the Real-World of 1984 seemed to more resemble Anthony Burgess’ novel “Brave New World” (1932), set in 2540, than Orwell, that doesn’t mean Orwell’s novel has passed his expiration date. Still, one has to wonder why this film, released in 1995, chose to set the story only four years in then-Future, during the last week of Millenium. The reasons for this appear to be three-fold:

 

First, the idea had been percolating since about 1986, so nearly a decade before the film got made.

 

Second, there were Real-World events-of-the-moment that seemed to make a SF interpretation imperative, and making the Future so close to those events helped the filmmakers maintain the intended immediacy with the audience’s actual experiences.

 

Third, there was potent symbolism in setting the film’s climax on New Year’s Eve that closed the Millennium, so much so that it’s a surprise so few films exploited it over the following few years. The film ends with the promise of liberation from the oppressions of our then-present but, unfortunately, more than twenty-years after the offered date, those promises remain unfulfilled in the Real World.

 

There was a time when Writers/Directors/Producers James Cameron and Kathryn Bigelow were Hollywood’s ultimate Power Couple. The had been married since 1989 and by 1995 had Directed six and four features, respectively; they had both had moved from low-budget to big; both earned critical and financial success; both focused on Action-orientated Genre films, though Cameron mostly worked within SF while Bigelow stuck more to the Crime-orientated; since at-least 1987 all their out-put were at least partial collaborations featuring many professionals both in front-of and behind-the-camera in Cameron and Bigelow films made back-to-back. This film was part of a package-deal with the studio that included both of their projects (though Cameron’s were budgeted more generously); both were notable for making female Characters more central and assertive than usual for films pitched to male audiences (though Bigelow went considerably farther than Cameron, driven by the fact that she was a rarity as female Director, even more so given her chosen Genres); both were known for having romantic relationships with their creative Collaborators, and even after their marriage ended in 1991 (by then, Cameron has been married a total of five times, this was Bigelow’s only) they still collaborated on projects – for example, this one.

 

This film started with an idea of Cameron’s and he worked with Bigelow on developing the Near-Future milieu. Said Bigelow, “Ironically, Jim’s thrust was the romantic element and mine was the harder edge, so it was kind of reverse gender.” Cameron eventually wrote a 90-page treatment, saying that, "It was practically a novel, but it was unwieldy; it needed structure," so he brought in Screenwriter Jay Cocks. There-after, he left the project to Bigelow.

 

Bigelow started out as Painting Student who became well-versed in Philosophy and Cultural Analysis, so her road to filmmaking could be compared to that of Director Jean-Luc Goddard, Criticism before Creation and embrace of Genre to explore Intellectual Ideas. Bigelow said in an interview, “I became dissatisfied with the art world—the fact that it requires a certain amount of knowledge to appreciate abstract material. Film, of course, does not demand this kind of knowledge. Film was this incredible social tool that required nothing of you besides twenty minutes to two hours of your time. I felt that film was more politically correct, and I challenged myself to try to make something accessible using film, but with a conscience. I still work off that foundation.”

 

Her short Student Film, “The Set Up” (1978, and seems unavailable to be viewed but has been described in detail by the Press) concerns two men (one played by Actor Gary Busey) who are beating each other up in a dark alley while two Professors of Semiotics analyze the action in an over-dub Narration. It sounds like a parody of the Intellectual buttressing she brought to her later hyper-Action movies, and Bigelow saw “Strange Days” as the culmination of the ideas first presented there, "It's a synthesis of all the different tracks I've been exploring, either deliberately or unconsciously, ever since I started making art." She also called it her most personal film.

 

It's also, to date, her only SF feature film, but she had been at the edge of the Genre for some time. Her Vampire film, “Near Dark” (1987), was a Supernatural Thriller, but in it strongly implied a Naturalistic Cause-and-Effect for its Fantastical Elements which helped ground the Impossible in the Contemporary Setting. Other SF-related projects included her acting role in Director Lizzie Borden’s “Born in Flames” (1982), her consideration of adapting William Gibson’s short story “The New Rose Hotel” (published in 1981 and in the end that film was made by Director Abel Ferrara in 1998 and it was awful), and being one of the four directors on the SF TV mini-series “Wild Palms” (1993). Significantly, all the above demonstrate similar Political stands with this film and in the case of “Born in Flames” there’s even shared plot-points “Strange Days.”

 

Affecting “Strange Days” evolving story was something that happened in the Real-World in Cameron and Bigelow’s home City of Los Angeles. In 1991, when the evolving project was already six years old: A Parolee named Rodney King was driving a car with two passengers when he was pulled over for speeding and DUI. King was aggressive towards Police, so some Use of Force was warranted, but the Police beating of King went beyond all reason; 33 baton blows, continuing long after King was tazered, on the ground, and begging, with the ranking Officer directing the blows with both words and gestures.

 

Importantly, the incident was video-taped. Had the video not existed, it is possible that the Officers might have escaped all discipline, and even if they did face Departmental charges, it is improbable that any would’ve faced Criminal ones. With the video, Police Use of Force became a National Scandal, and Criminal Charges were brought against four of the eight responding Officers. The first Trial ended in 1992 with hard-to-justify Acquittals, and those Acquittals sparked days of Nation-Wide Rioting of Historic proportions (in LA alone there were 63 dead, 2,383 injured, 12,000 arrested, and over a $1 billion in property damage). In 1993 there was a second Trial, not for Assault, but for Civil Rights violations, resulting in two of the Officers being Convicted and receiving Jail Sentences.  

 

Bigelow said, "I was involved in the downtown cleanup, and I was very moved by that experience. You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live." In a separate interview she said, “Being on the streets with burned-out shells of buildings and the National Guard milling around suggested a lot of the film’s visual basis.”

 

The film sometimes a Masterpiece, but more often a Hot Mess. Over-ambitious, it explored a vast array of issues, but two central themes drove the proceedings: First, how we were distracting ourselves from Real-World relationships and responsibilities through Entertainment Technologies. Secondly, how Insulation Born of Privilege effectively blocked us from taking a stand against Social Injustices. These two themes never fully integrate and that is most obvious as the film’s multiple, violent, climaxes tumble over each other; the various story threads aren’t tied together so much as they were beaten into submission.

 

As clumsy and excessive as the film’s ending is, there are also ideas behind it trying to be realized: Throughout the film our Heroes, the above-mentioned Mace (Angela Bassett) and Lenny (Ralph Fiennes), are trying to solve two seemingly-related Murders and expose a vast Conspiracy, only to learn in the end that the Murders are (mostly) unrelated and the Conspiracy barely existed. The injustice, violence, and consequences were real, so to a degree everything is connected, but nothing was strongly connected, because life is mostly chaos.

 

Thinking of this film’s last-act-stumbling reminded me of Critic Hilton Als’ observations about Writer Joan Didion’s struggle to make sense of how the ideals of the 1960s died because as all became subsumed by drugs and violence, “You couldn’t make a cohesive narrative about the times because the times were not cohesive." Didion, herself, wrote of, “Adultescents drifting from city to city, sloughing off both past and future like a snake shedding it skin. Children who were never taught, and now would never learn, to play the games that held society together.” Importantly, Didion worked outside all the major Genres of SF,F&H, Crime, or even Romance, and was blessed with a unique gift for lucidly communicating the fragmentary-ness of experience, both experiences witnessed and personally consummated.

 

Both Didion and Bigelow were both concerned with a World wherein it seemed that (to quote Didion’s favorite William Butler Yeats’ poem) “the center cannot hold.” Bigelow was clearly struggling how to make sense of the ideals of the 1990s dying because as all became subsumed by Racial/Economic stratification and violence (note: Violent crime was rising in the 1960s and everyone knew it; it was actually dropping in the 1990s, but no one believed it). Unlike Didion, Bigelow chose to stay rigorously in-Genre, where coherence requires cohesiveness. Bigelow said, “I have a desire to subvert and redefine. Genre exists for that purpose. It’s a great interlocutor with the audience, a way in, a language they understand and that makes them comfortable. Once you touch base in a genre you can go in any direction.” But in this case, I’d argue that Genre became a trap for her; this is a Whodunnit and Conspiracy Thriller, so it required a linearity that proved difficult to play against the milieu of pre-Apocalyptic Anarchy. 

 

The film had the expected exposition regarding things directly plot-related, but when it came to the SF tech and Future setting, it was blessedly show-not-tell. “Strange Days” never tells you that the USA is edging towards Civil War, but Lenny watches it looking through the window his Mercedes Benz: he’s indifferent to trash-can fires, angry protests, Police in Armored Personal Carriers, and generally senseless violence, including thugs beating up a guy dressed as Santa Claus. Bigelow drew directly from what she saw in the aftermath of the 1992 Riots to build the details of the film’s environment. Regarding living in such wreckage, she said, “You became inured to it very quickly.”

 

The SF tech is a VR technology called Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, or “SQUID.” When wearing its light-weight skullcap, one can record one’s own direct experience, then later re-live it, or share it with others, fooling all five senses, this is called “Playback.” It's highly addictive, the Junkies are called “Wiretrippers.” It’s not entirely safe, and encourages extreme Privacy Violations, dumb and dangerous Stunts, Blackmail, Rape-Porn, and Snuff Movies, the latter being call “Blackjacks.” Obviously, it’s mostly illegal.

 

Lenny is a broken man, a disgraced ex-Cop turned SQUID addict and dealer, obsessively Playbacking the experiences of happier days now long gone. When Lenny is pitching his product, crows, "This is real life, pure and uncut, straight from the cerebral cortex. You're there! You're doing it! You're feeling it!" He refers to himself as “The Santa Claus of the subconscious … I'm your priest, your shrink, your main connection to the switchboard of the soul." But his personal version of Jacking-into Cyberspace is more like Jacking-off, and his surname, Nero, is symbolic, as he plays with himself in a desultory manner while Rome burns.

 

By mysterious means, Lenny comes into possession of the two SQUID recordings that drive the plot. In one, Iris (Brigitte Bako), a prostitute and groupie of the Rap Musician and Activist named Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer), was wearing the head-set when she Witnessed Jeriko’s Murder. In the other, Iris is Raped and Murdered by someone wearing a headset.

 

The LA of this film is being torn apart by the broadly-held belief that the Police have Hit-Squads roving Black neighborhoods, a powder-keg situation being badly mishandled by Police Commissioner Palmer Strickland (Josef Sommer). Palmer is obviously meant as a swipe against Real-World Police Commissioner Daryl Gates, who was forced to announce his resignation from Public Service because of his shocking mishandling of Community Relations and Use-of-Force incidents, and whose last official act as Commissioner was to completely screw-up handling of the 1992 Riots. In the film, it looks like Jeriko was a victim of one of the Police Death Squads, and even more so after corrupt Cops Burton Steckler (Vincent D'Onofrio) and Dwayne Engelman (William Fichtner) make repeated attempts on Lenny and Mace’s lives.

 

Lenny receiving the mystery recordings clearly has something to do with his former friendship with Iris and Iris’ connection to Lenny’s ex-girlfriend Faith Justin (Juliette Lewis). Faith is now a Pop Star involved with sleazy Music Mogul Philo Grant (Michael Wincott), who just happens to have recently signed Jeriko.

 

Lenny still pines for Faith, and Faith is aware that Lenny obsessively Playbacks their days together on his SQUID, which disgusts her. In a particularly harsh scene, Faith has her back to Lenny when she says, “You know one of the ways movies are still better than playback? The music comes up, there's credits, and you always know when it's over.” Then she turns to around look at Lenny in the eyes and shouts, “IT'S OVER!”

 

Lenny seems to have only two real friends left: Mace, a Body Guard/Chauffer whose armored Limo was much cooler than Lenny’s Mercedes; the other is Max (Tom Sizemore), another ex-Cop, now sketchy Private Eye.

 

It’s a stand-out cast, with Actor Fiennes as Character Lenny and Actress Bassett as Character Mace providing the most impressive performances.

Regarding Fiennes, Critic Owen Gleiberman put it nicely, “There’s a mad comic energy about him when he’s hustling, but Lenny’s jittery narcissism also rebounds off something soft and generous in Fiennes’ nature.”

 

I want to give Bassett even higher praise than Fiennes, if only because she seems to have the more difficult role. Fiennes only needed to convince the Audience that loser Lenny deserved a chance at redemption; Bassett had to convince the Audience of Character Mace’s deep feelings for Lenny even though she was obviously too good for her. Also, Mace is the film’s Moral Center, so Bassett is stuck with making all the speeches, and outside of Shakespeare, that’s never enviable position. This connects with another flaw in the storytelling:

This film is about the brutalism of Racial/Economic stratification and how the Bourgeoisie is Amusing Itself to Death in self-imposed Entertainment-Isolation. Raging against Racial Injustice is the fire of the film, but the comfort zone of the storytellers is the plight of the Bourgeoisie. All the major characters range from Petite Bourgeoisie to Super-Rich at the time they are introduced to us, and it’s clear that, of the major Characters, only Mace and Matt were ever really familiar with the bottom rungs of the ladder.

 

Also, among both major and minor Characters, there are only two Blacks with names, Mace and Jeriko, in an otherwise all-White-sea. True, Mace is central, but Jeriko dies basically the moment he’s introduced. This Racial/Economic distribution of the Characters seems at odds with many of the story’s goals, and perhaps was because the story’s Racial/Economic themes were so late-arriving in the story’s development.

 

Not only did Bigelow make the story connect with the LA Riots, she also seemed to have been the one who most developed Mace’s character and definitely was the one who lobbied for Actress Bassett’s casting. Bassett is a powerful maternal figure, sexy as all hell, and a first-rate Action Hero, so much so that Lenny is often placed in a position of being rescued by her.

 

Critic Andrew Hultkrans recognized the Racial symbolism behind presenting the two cultures through the specific Characters represented, “The white characters seem stuck in the past, like Lenny, or nihilistically concerned with the present, like Max. But the African-Americans are concerned with a revolution in the future. We hear a black talk-radio caller who’s saying, ‘2K [the year 2000] is coming, it’s going to be revolution.’ So, you get opposing views of the millennium: All the black voices are saying 2K is a new beginning, and all the white voices are saying it’s the end of the world, the Rapture, Judgment Day.”

 

Among the things that this film should be praised for is that though it had a usually long running time, two-and-one-half hours, it is never dull; exhausting maybe, but never dull. Since her second feature, “Near Dark” (1987), Bigelow has been praised the extra-ordinary narrative momentum she achieves and she, herself, describes her style as, "visceral, high impact, kinetic, cathartic," though at times she’s also contemplative in her mannerisms.

 

Her triumph in creating an artificial immediacy of experience made her uniquely prepared for this project. “Thrill-seeking adrenaline addicts have always fascinated me. The idea seems to be that it’s not until you risk your humanness that you feel most human. Not until you risk all awareness do you gain awareness. It’s about peak experience. For me, also, it’s about cinema as a cathartic medium. In order for cinema to be cathartic, you need to create a crucible by which a character comes to define himself.”

 

Contrasting this, in the same film, is, “It’s got a tremendous amount of dialogue and story—at one point we thought of it as science fiction as if written by David Mamet.”

 

“Strange Days” certainly wasn’t the first film about VR, nor even the first communicate that experience through POV shots, but it’s still a landmark. This film’s SQUIDs have a more-than-passing resemblance to Brain–Computer Interface in Director Douglas Trumbull’s “Brainstorm” (1987), but Bigelow’s version is immensely more powerful. Trumbull had quit Directing features after “Brainstorm” because of how little the studios supported his vision: Notably, he was denied the permission to use a new technology he’d created to facilitate his VR-POV scenes; meanwhile Bigelow got more generous budget and new tech. Though Bigelow’s cinematic tools were much different than Trumbull’s, like Trumbull, they were things she and her crew largely built themselves; they modified an Ari camera so that it “weighed much less than the smallest EYMO and yet could take all the prime lenses.” Her VR scenes were not only better than Trumbull’s, even today they’re better than anyone else’s version of the same, and we’re now more than 20-years into the Future and have several more generations of new tech in all filmmakers’ toolboxes.

 

Even before the Characters or Plot mechanics start getting laid out, we are introduced to the poisonous aspects of the SQUID experience with a pulse-pounding armed robbery recorded from the POV of one of the Criminals. It concludes with a dizzying roof-to-roof-jump that ends in death. Only afterwards do we learn the scene is really a Playback; Lenny is wearing a SQUID and he doesn’t like the experience all. He maybe the-Near Future equivalent of a Drug-Pusher, but he draws the line at pushing Blackjack.

 

That scene wowed even the movie’s detractors (of which there were many). It and included a 16-foot-jump without a safety harness that was the product of two years planning and then choregraphed for weeks in advance of shooting. It appeared to be one long take, but really involved multiple hidden cuts and multiple cameras, including a Steadi-cam and a Helmet-cam. In an interview Cameron said, "We designed transitions that would work seamlessly. It was a very technical scene that doesn't look technical."

 

This was Bigelow’s fifth feature in fourteen years, but her directorial credits also included TV and music videos, forms defined by extremely-tight shooting schedules, and with the Videos, hyper-visual stylization somehow had to be squeezed into that schedule. She brought those disciplines here; though her 77-day shooting schedule might sound generous compared to other films, but that fails to appreciate the enormous number of distinct scenes, usually shot on location, usually at night, and the complexity of their execution. Producer Steven-Charles Jaffe said that Bigelow "was so well prepared that what would have taken another director several weeks to do, she did in a matter of days."

 

Another bravado scene, but also the film’s most improbable moment, was the Happy Ending. That one scene cost $750,000 of the $42 million budget. It required the hiring of 50 off-duty Police Officers to try to keep order during the filming of an Anti-Cop movie. There were 10,000 extras, though they were not extras in the normal sense because Bigelow was staging a concert that they paid $10 admission for, instead of she paying them for their time.

 

Set in the middle of a crowd of New Year’s Celebrators, it turns shockingly Violent. But when Mace and Lenny finally kiss, everyone switches back to celebrating and are full of hope. I think in the Real-World, it would’ve descended into a Panic, an even more Violent Melee, and blood would’ve flowed in LA’s already angry streets. What happened during the Real-World filming of this scene, a wholly remarkable piece of staging, involved enough criminality to belie Bigelow’s Message of Hope. When the long-night’s shooting was done, five people were hospitalized for suffering overdoses of Ecstasy.

 

The most controversial scene was Character Iris’ explicit Rape and Murder seen through the Killer’s POV. The more positive reviewers elevated Bigelow’s achievement to the use POV shots in “Lady in the Lake” (1947) and the way the killings were executed in “Peeping Tom” (1960), but at the time this film was made, POV shots were most associated with the Stalking scenes in the most notoriously Misogynistic of Horror sub-Genres, Slasher Movies. The scene is intense and exploitive by design, tying into the movie’s themes regarding the Moral Corruption of Thrill Seeking merges with Entertainment Technology, indicting the Audience for their Voyeurism, and commenting on how the “Male Gaze” reduces women to consumables.

 

But not everybody was appreciative.  Critic David Denby called it, "the sickest sequence in modern movies." Several others were less harsh but still found it objectional, like Michael Wilmington, “At its best, it's ferociously fast and madly exciting, a marvel of the high-speed techno-thrillermaker's art. At its worst, it seems to be wallowing in the same lurid trash that's part of its subject, throwing simulated snuff porno and sleaze in our faces with the mixed motives Cecil B. DeMille must have had whenever he staged another biblical orgy.” And Peter Travers, who defended the scene, still felt it necessary to observe, “The walkouts at the screening I attended indicate that some viewers think Bigelow is getting off on what her film is criticizing.”

  

Bigelow defended her choices, “We have become a society of watchers. ‘Strange Days’ makes the viewer culpable … Art imitates life and you have to be unflinching to be faithful to the truth. Films don't make violence, there is violence in society."

 

The film was also criticized for simplifying the issues it addressed; I didn’t think the perception is a fair one, because much of the more complex thought disappeared behind the Sound and Thunder; on the other hand, there were things Bigelow totally nailed.

 

The Acquittal of the four Cops in the first Rodney King Trial was pretty obviously Racist, the Defense was able to get a unnecessary change of venue to Simi Valley, a famously Conservative community with a notable White Supremacist presence; the jury was mostly White and had no Blacks at all; and the Jurors interviewed by the Press demonstrated that they were overwhelemingly focused on Victim King’s Criminal Record, Intoxication, and Aggressive Behavior, and dismissive of the Extreme Beating he received while helpless. That being said, King created the situation, so making him copiable, so his subsequent Lionization by some was dubious. King continued to Abuse Alcohol and Drugs and engage in Violent Behavior for the rest of his life; he drowned in his swimming pool in 2012 with a cocktail of drugs in his system.

 

Bigelow was trying to address that complexity by revealing in the end that the vast Conspiracy was mostly an Urban Myth and presenting Jeriko (a seriously underdeveloped character) as both a Cultural Hero and kind of a Jerk. Though siding with the Black Activists, she was critical of building your whole World-view on short clips of events without context. Peter Labuza wrote of the relationship between the Real-World Beating of Rodney King video and the fictional Murder of Jeriko, “Subsequently, the danger surrounding his death is not that he was killed, but that there is a tape that reveals how it happened. Actual events are less harmful than their media documentation, which amplifies its reception and thus its consequences.”

 

On the other hand, the film’s hostility to Police was so extreme, it was blinding. Though Bigelow insisted, “We did not mean to indict an Institution. I don't believe the ‘system’ is outside of us that we just observe from a distance. The ‘system’ is us. It is composed by individuals. What it comes down to here is two individuals that have grossly abused their power.”

 

That’s not what she delivered and the anti-Cop attitude was without nuance. All Cops and ex-Cops in this film, named and un-named, are bad in one way or another. True, in the end, the Character of Commissioner Palmer proves not Corrupt and a bit less of an asshole then he was first presented, but he was never close to being sympathetic. Character Palmer in the film was as much as a stand-in for the Jury of the first King Trail as much as he was a stand-in for Real-World Commissioner Gates. He was a man who defined his morality Punitively, more about what he didn’t Morally Approve of than what explicitly took place.  

 

It should also be pointed out that Bigelow’s work displays of love tough-guys (and girls) who living slightly (or more than slightly) beyond the law. Even when her films featured Cop-Heroes (“Blue Steel” (1990), “Point Break” (1991)) they are half-vigilante. Regarding Police as Public Servants, she consistently displays hostility. She chose to make another film in the same vein of this one, “Detroit” (2017), a recreation of the 1967 Algiers Motel Incident, a Mass-Shooting committed by out-of-control Cops and National Guardsmen during a Riot. Like in the King Case, several Cops were indicted but then were dubiously Acquitted at Trial. I’m not condemning that film specifically, it’s credited for a high-standard of Historical Accuracy for a Docudrama, but I gotta question her relationship with Authority if that’s her only way of treating the subject.

 

As this film was a SF about the then-current situation, we should not be surprised that it proved more Prophetic than other SF stories set farther in the Future. Also, we should be unhappy that it proved Prophetic.

 

When released in 1995, “Strange Days” had the misfortune of opening the same day as the Verdict in the O.J. Simpson Trial, a case of Domestic Violence that escalated into a Double-Murder that became as Racially charged as the Rodney King beating because a Lionized Black Celebrity was accused of killing two Whites, one of whom was his estranged wife. A member of Simpson’s Defense-Team, called the “Dream Team,” later admitted that they chose to “play the race card,” adding that “we dealt it from the bottom of the deck.” The Defense created an evidence-free narrative of Simpson being the victim of a vast, Racist, Conspiracy by Police and others. Simpson’s Jury was mostly Black, and his Acquittal seems to reflect Racial Politics in much the same way as the Acquittal of the King Cops, only in reverse. In fairness to the Simpson Jury, that case was more complex than the King Beating, the Prosecution made some basic errors, and the Conspiracy fantasy was abetted by Racist Tirades made by one of the first arriving Detectives (those Tirades were over a decade-old and unrelated to the case, deemed inadmissible, but it is broadly assumed the Jury was made aware of them improperly).  

 

Even as this film was being made, a Violent Feud was developing between Rap-Music labels on the East and West Coast of the USA, both companies run by men with long Criminal Histories, and representing Artists with Criminal Records. The escalation climaxed with the murders of Rappers Tupac Shakur, in 1996, and Notorious B.I.G, in 1997, neither of which was ever solved. Though a Police Conspiracy against these men is not suspected, both Artists were, like the fictional Jeriko, vocal in the Political stands against Police behaviors in the Black Community, and in both cases ex-Cops with strong ties to Criminal Organizations have been linked to the Homicides.

 

The quality of the cheapest video-recording devices improved dramatically in just a few short years after “Strange Days” release, and in Social Media Video Channels started becoming the center of Culture Inter-course. Almost immediately, dangerous stunts executed on Social Media that became both popular and notorious. They would make Celebrities out of fools and encourage Voyeurism of Pain and Death.

 

In 2002 Journalist Daniel Pearl was beheaded on-camera by Terrorists, and for an extended period Social Media Channels struggled and failed to suppress the video, essentially a Snuff Film and a Real-World version of “Strange Days” Blackjacks. Though Social Media did finally exert some control of the situation, this Snuff Film can still be found on the Dark Wed, along with abundant Child Porn and other Illegal perversions, and what became known as “Youtube Killings” (regardless if the videos were shown on Youtube or not) continue to take place.

 

In 2012, George Zimmerman, a White/Hispanic with a History of Violence and Racist Tirades, gunned down Trayvon Martin, an unarmed Black teen who was not committing any crime and was exactly where he was supposed to be. As Zimmerman was told by Police not to engage Martin, but initiated the confrontation anyway, his claim of Self-Defense should’ve been laughable.  But Zimmerman was also friendly with the local Police, who dragged their feet regarding Charging him. When Martin’s family successfully brought National Attention to the case, Zimmerman was finally Arrested but then Acquitted by an almost all-White jury without a single Black member. Since the acquittal, Zimmerman has maintained his Celebrity status, actioning of the Murder Weapon for a huge profit, selling autographs and paintings of the Confederate flag. The Black Lives Matter (“BLM”) movement emerged directly out of this scandal.

 

In 2015, Journalist Alison Parker and Photojournalist Adam Ward were interviewing Local Government Employee Vicki Gardner when Parker and Ward’s former Colleague, Vester Lee Flanagan II, opened fire on all three, killing Parker and Ward, and, hours later, killing himself. He videotaped the incident and uploaded it to Social Media. The TV station that employed the victims pleaded with the public not to share the video, but that was ignored. CNN ran parts of the video hourly on the day of the shooting.

 

In 2020, George Floyd, a convicted Felon with a more serious Criminal Record than Rodney King, was arrested for a far less serious Crime than King was in 1991. Panicking, Floyd Resisted Arrest, but passively, not aggressively, and was quickly subdued. Despite being on the ground and handcuffed already, Police Officer Derek Chauvin continued putting pressure on Floyd’s lungs, making it difficult for him to breathe. Floyd died. Chauvin was abetted by three other Officers who, though they didn’t directly Abuse Floyd, failed to stop Chauvin’s Excessive Force. As in the case of King, but unlike the cases of Simpson and Zimmerman, the death was video-taped. Like all the other cases of Police misconduct mentioned in this essay, it became a National Scandal, but in this Case all four Officers were Convicted and Jailed. During this scandal, BLM became a considerably more powerful Political Movement, and large rallies in support of the cause appeared in some surprising locations, like Simi Valley, California, where the Cops in the King Case were initially Acquitted. Some of those Rallies became Violent, and some of those Riots led to killings indefensible Acquittals of obvious Murderers like Kyle Rittenhouse.

 

In 2024 Justin Mohn, a follower of the Social Media based, Conspiracy Masturbating, movement called QAnon, Murdered his father and displayed the decapitated head on Youtube while ranting about Government Conspiracies. It took hours for Youtube to become aware of it and take it down, and it had been gaining viewers the whole of that time.

 

But all of that was post-“Strange Days,” in 1995 the movie Bombed. Perhaps because of its long running -time when features in general were getting shorter, or it was poorly marketed, or the reviews were mixed, or because as great as it is, it was clearly a Hot Mess too. It grossed under $8 million against a $42 million budget. Its failure was compared to other disastrous projects by prominent Directors which opened at the same time and had a similar budgets, like William Friedkin’s “Jade” and Roland Joffé’s “The Scarlet Letter.” The difference is that the latter two films were just plain awful, but “Strange Days” was a Hot Mess touched with brilliance.

 

I guess any Director as clearly talented as Bigelow, and with a such well-established record of success, can have faith that their career will recover from something like this, but for Bigelow, things just kept getting worse.

 

The next year, 1996, she collaborated with the talented Eric Red on the script for “Undertow,” which proved an ungodly mess of a Domestic Thriller that she’s probably thanking God she didn’t Direct.

 

She returned to the Director’s chair in 2000, so five years after “Strange Days,” with “The Weight of Water,” which I haven’t seen, but it also Bombed.

 

Another two years later, in 2002, she Directed “K-19: The Widowmaker,” which I personally recommend, but was even more expensive to produce than the far more ambitious “Strange Days” and it also Bombed. 

 

Talent or no, it’s hard to believe any Career could survive that, and Bigelow didn’t Direct another feature for another six years. But then, in 2008, the war film, “The Hurt Locker,” was hugely successful and critically acclaimed, “The Hurt Locker” was nominated for numerous awards, notably Best Picture and Best Director. Much was made of the fact that the same year, her ex-husband, Cameron, was also nominated for Best Picture and Best Director, for the SF “Avatar,” but it really wasn’t a surprise she beat him. “Avatar” was a technical triumph, but wall-to-wall clichés and dramatically half-baked.

 

Trailer:

 

STRANGE DAYS - Trailer ( 1995 )