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Matt Glasby

This is the latest instalment in our From the Vault feature series, in which we reflect on culturally significant movies celebrating notable anniversaries.
One of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Kathryn Bigelow is known for the likes of Point Break, Zero Dark Thirty and this year’s awards-tipped A House of Dynamite. In 2010, she became the first woman to win the best director Oscar, for The Hurt Locker.
But even great filmmakers stumble sometimes.
Part sci-fi thriller, part state-of-the-nation drama, the 1995 film Strange Days bombed upon release, 30 years ago this month. Yet for all its flaws, it is an ambitious, prescient piece of work, and definitely worth another look.


The setting is Los Angeles in the days leading up to the millennium. When African-American rapper Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) is murdered, people take to the streets in protest.
Former vice squad detective Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) finds evidence incriminating the police, but can he and his friends Max (Tom Sizemore), a private investigator, and bodyguard/limo driver Mace (Angela Bassett) get it to the right people without getting killed?
Lenny makes a living selling illegal “clips” recorded on “Squids” (Superconducting Quantum Interference Devices). These show footage recorded by people performing (mostly) sexual or criminal acts, allowing the user to experience illicit sensations first-hand.
He is also trying to get back together with his ex-girlfriend, Faith (Juliette Lewis), who knows more about Jeriko One’s killing than she is letting on.

As you can probably tell from the synopsis, the narrative is a mess. The script, by James Cameron (Bigelow’s ex-husband as of 1991, who also produces) and Jay Cocks, crams in enough material for three movies, and never quite resolves the clash between Bigelow’s social conscience and Cameron’s technological concerns.
Fiennes is miscast in the lead (apparently Andy Garcia was also in the frame, and would have been a more obvious choice), and Mace – the film’s moral centre – is sidelined for the first hour or so.
But like Bigelow’s later Detroit (2017), Strange Days is a powerful portrait of a city on the brink of implosion, with police brutality, burning cars and school shootings.
The spectre of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, which erupted after members of the LAPD were filmed beating an unarmed black man, Rodney King, looms large.
“I was involved in the downtown clean-up, and I was very moved by that experience,” Bigelow said of the riots. “You got a palpable sense of the anger and frustration and economic disparity in which we live.”

Much of this is expressed through the character of Mace, a single mother just trying to get by. When we see her, incensed, hitting Vincent D’Onofrio’s corrupt cop with a baton, or declaring, “Maybe it’s time for a war,” you can feel the righteous rage simmering.
Filming also took place during the trial of OJ Simpson, whose sudden, extremely toxic celebrity is echoed in the characters of Jeriko One and Wade (Michael Jace), an American football player turned thug-for-hire.
Ultimately, though, Strange Days is a film about the narcotic power of cinema.
“It’s about watching and its consequences,” as Bigelow put it.

The Squid clips are incredible – exciting and urgent – like being plugged straight into an action flick, or a snuff movie.
The first we see is an armed robbery that goes wrong, with the perpetrator – essentially our eyes and ears – plunging several storeys to his death. It required two years of planning, a new camera built especially for the project, and a stuntman to jump between two buildings without a safety harness.
A sickening later sequence shows poor Iris (Brigitte Bako), a witness to Jeriko One’s shooting, being raped and murdered, which we experience as if we were the killer.
Nero peddles these clips like they were mind-expanding drugs, saying, “One man’s mundane and desperate existence is another man’s Technicolor,” and calling himself the “Santa Claus of the subconscious”.
An early scene, which shows two women beating up a Father Christmas on the street, gives us the true measure of that idea.

When it comes to the clips, Lenny’s patter is feverish and sexualised. Users “jack in”, and someone who has never seen one has a “virgin brain”.
But they can be addictive, too. Both Lenny and Faith’s new boyfriend, Philo (the reliably evil Michael Wincott), prefer watching clips of her rather than having sex with her, which seems to predict the perils of internet pornography.
For those who look closely, there is also a warning about the future of cinema itself – the idea that the internet, like Squid technology, will turn movie-watching from a joyous collective experience into something atomised and lonely.
Like that stuntman with no safety harness, Strange Days does not quite land the jump. But as a transitional movie between Bigelow’s action-man fantasies of Point Break and the PTSD-ruined realities of The Hurt Locker, Strange Days is a fascinating footnote in an extraordinary career.
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Ralph Fiennes and Angela Bassett in a still from Strange Days. Kathryn Bigelow’s flawed thriller gave a powerful portrait of Los Angeles on the brink of implosion, and prophetic warnings about the expansion of the internet, when it was released in 1995.

Juliette Lewis in a still from Strange Days.

Ralph Fiennes in a still from Strange Days.

Juliette Lewis and Michael Wincott in a still from Strange Days.

Angela Bassett and Ralph Fiennes in a still from Strange Days.

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Morgan Freeman (left) and Brad Pitt in a still from Seven (1995). Photo: Warner Bros Entertainment

Morgan Freeman in a still from Seven. Photo: Warner Bros Entertainment

(From left) Gwyneth Paltrow, Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman in a still from Seven. Photo: Warner Bros Entertainment

(From left) Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey and Morgan Freeman in a still from Seven. Photo: Warner Bros Entertainment

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Jeanne Tripplehorn (front) in a still from Waterworld. Photo: Park Circus/Universal

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Kevin Costner (left) and Gerard Murphy in a still from Waterworld. Photo: Park Circus/Universal

Jeanne Tripplehorn in a still from Waterworld. Photo: Park Circus/Universal

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It bombed upon release, but this 1995 sci-fi with Ralph Fiennes offers a vivid portrait of contemporary society, and some prescient warnings


It bombed upon release, but this 1995 sci-fi with Ralph Fiennes offers a vivid portrait of contemporary society, and some prescient warnings.


Why Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days, released 30 years ago, was way ahead of its time

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}It bombed upon release, but this 1995 sci-fi with Ralph Fiennes offers a vivid portrait of contemporary society, and some prescient warnings

It bombed upon release, but this 1995 sci-fi with Ralph Fiennes offers a vivid portrait of contemporary society, and some prescient warnings