Strange Days
Year: | 1995 |
Studio: | 20th Century Fox |
Director: | Kathryn Bigelow |
Producer: | James Cameron |
Writer: | James Cameron/Jak Cocks |
Cast: | Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore, Michael Wincott, Vincent D'Onofrio, William Fitchner |
The finest work of neither Ralph Fiennes, James Cameron or Kathryn Bigelow, this digital dystopia story borrows and owes a lot to everything from Neuromancer to Brave New World.
Fiennes plays the future version of a charismatic drug dealer among the impoverished denizens of a Blade Runner-like society of the future. But, also riffing on the then Next Big Thing of virtual reality, he deals in life-like experiences instead of drugs, recorded from the cerebral cortexes of people during dreams that project the emotions, feelings and sensations from the dreams straight into your brain.
It's good world-building, but the execution is fairly run of the mill when the hero is sent a dream/memory disc of the brutal rape and murder of a hooker he knows, leading to a high-level conspiracy in the police force that he has to bust open.