Strange Days

IMDB
First time viewed: No
Current Release: No
Watched With: Myself

Awesome movie. How come no-one I know has ever heard of it? Fix that now.

It has been a very very long time since I've seen this. In fact I think I've only seen it once before, purely because I saw James Cameron's name all over it. Besides his obvious influences on the film the thing that stands out most watching it now? Actually it was the realisation that this was where Fatboy Slim got his "Right Here, Right Now" sample. Even if you've only heard that song once, that phrase is repeated about 100 times, so when it pops up in the film it jumps out. That is neat, I love it when I find samples.

Kathryn Bigelow recently won an oscar, but before she was making 'important' movies that bored me she made fun movies that entertained me. Who doesn't love Near Dark or Point Break? (Confession time, I don't love Point Break because I have never seen the whole film. OMG I am a horrible person, I know. But Everyone I know that's seen it loves it. I'll have to rectify this heinous situation immediately.) Here's hoping her Osama bin Laden film will be somewhere firmly in between the entertaining and oscar worthy.

The action here is heavy on the "90's gun shoot out" side with some other good stuff thrown in too. It features a great Tom Sizemore death too, I love the ingenuity of that scene.

More impressive, doubly so considering when this was made, are all the first person sequences. When memories are played back they are done in long first person point of view shots. Now that's very common nowdays, but back before they had digital cameras that would allow for this, it meant having to light entire blocks of streets at night, being able to hide all the lights to allow for camera mobility. It also meant having a small enough camera though could still shoot relatively smoothly. Keeping all that in mind these sequences are even more impressive. Apparently they had to build custom made cameras and had a year worth of preparation for them. The opening shot is kinda staggering. Well worth a look, just for that.

The crowd scenes at the end are rather impressive too. Unfortunately It comes after a first climax. They don't intercut them so we get one climax and then have to wait for another as well and at 145 minutes it starts to run out of steam a little. Still you wanna wait around to see what happens to Vincent D'Onofrio and William Fichtner. What a pair.

And lets not forget Ralph Fiennes being all action man. Whoda thunkit? Always knew Angela Bassett was badass but it was great seeing Fiennes rip the place up, he should do it more often.

As might be expected in a Kathryn Bigelow film from the 90's it's a dark, grungy world of drug addicts, criminals and perverts. It's set in the futuristic world of 1999 at the dawn of the new millennium. Not exactly future proof considering it was only made in 1995. Did they really think it was only going to take 4 years for the technology to record and relive someone else's memories? But god bless them for their mid 90's future fashion.

This is a really neat 90's action cop movie, dark and sleazy with a sci-fi bent. Well worth a look, highly enjoyable.