Strange Days

Saw Strange Days. It was one of those messy films with way too much going on. I'm almost positive it started off life as a comic book. The first few scenes are really aggressively over-stuffed. The protagonist drives his car down a city street as he flips through the radio. The camera pans giddily over two hookers beating up a man in a santa suit, cops kicking over a homeless person's cart, a flaming car. A blare of electronica cuts off a newscaster's voice. Yes, ladies and gents, the future is now and it's a whole lot of obnoxious bullshit.

The film is built upon a skeleton which is essentially noir. The ex-cop protagonist still pines for his ex-girlfriend who is a hooker with (of course) a heart of gold. He teams up with his trusty black female side-kick to figure out who's killed some other hooker-friend of his ex's. That's the core of the film. Around that, we're also in the future. A new type of media now exists that lets you record and play people's experiences. This is entirely unnecessary and pointless but sort of fun. Also: there's a race war of some kind brewing. This is the film's stab at cultural relevance I guess and it sort of sputters.

The film isn't bad, just empty. It's kind of a party of a movie, always something going on. The thing which is going on is usually kind of dumb and loud, but it's entertaining and mesmerizing so okay. the race-relations thing is kind of interesting but I don't really think it becomes coherent enough to really go anywhere. This incoherence is typified by the protagonist's ambiguous relationship with his side-kick. They establish that he's still pining for his hooker-girlfriend but then the sidekick gives him back-rubs as he falls asleep with his head on her lap. Odd. She'll bail him out of bad situation while incandescently cursing him out but then, not one scene later, she's back to bail him out all over again. Why is she hanging around this dude? There's a romantic vibe between them, but then he's banging on about his girlfriend again and it makes no sense.

Anyway, I'm being kind of dismissive but this is a pretty entertaining film. It's sort of barely on the cusp of being a really dazzling film though which is frustrating. At heart, like I say, it's a noir. There's cyber-punk trappings to keep us interested but the slowly unravelling mystery is what really keeps us watching. This is very high-quality popcorn fare.