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2010, 02-06:
Review of film: “STRANGE DAYS” + SPECIAL DVD INFO from KATHRYN BIGELOW
Director:
Kathryn Bigelow
Writers:
James Cameron
Jay Cocks.
Starring:
Ralph Fiennes
Angela Bassett
Juliette Lewis
Tom Sizemore
Michael Wincott
Vincent D'Onofrio
Glenn Plummer
Brigitte Bako
Richard Edson
William Fichtner
Josef Sommer
Joe Urla
Nicky Katt
Michael Jace
Louise LeCavalier
MPAA Rating:
R for intense disturbing violence, sexuality and pervasive strong language.
Quotes:
“You know, I don’t deal in ‘Snuff’ [type videos]…”
“My customers want uncut.”
“… I bring you street life.”
“Second to last day of the whole damn century.”
“Nothing changes New Year’s day.”
“Every little thing is gonna be all right.”
“It’s my job to know people.”
“I can get you anything you want.”
“Your schemes, your scams, and your ‘slick’ act.”
“You assume too much.”
“You’re like a Ferrari-- just something to show the other guy.”
“911 is BUSY.”
“You’re going to get yourself KILLED for this toxic-waste bitch?!”
MY Rating:
7.5 of 10 stars (based on watching a DVD version of the 145-minute film).
A Visit to “The Santa Claus of the SUBCONSCIOUS”
The year was 1995-- & director James Cameron started filming for his eventually-record-setting film “TITANIC” (which would be released 2 years later). Four years before ’95, he’d been married to a woman director named KATHRYN BIGELOW…
… This year (2010), both Cameron and Bigelow are nominated for Best Director OSCARs-- Cameron for the sci-fi “AVATAR”, & Bigelow for the action drama “THE HURT LOCKER”…
… But, back in 1995, a film was released on which they worked TOGETHER-- a sci-fi action film called “Strange Days”, which was written & produced by Cameron and directed by Bigelow… I thought it would be interesting to view a DVD copy of that film at this time, & this Review is the result of that:
… “Strange Days” is set in the last two days of 1999, with plans underway in Los Angeles to celebrate the arrival of a new Millennium-- a whole new “y2K” Century to deal with… Commonplace life at that time was fairly the same as that lived when the film started in production (around 4 years before)-- but with an added “TOUGHNESS” in everyday living, plus various futuristic elements that certain people were utilizing for adding “excitement” into their lives…
… When the film starts on December 30th, we’re introduced to Lenny Nero (RALPH FIENNES), who is (per Cameron’s own words) “a liar and a hustler”, an ex-cop who has “a kind of transparent honesty and vulnerability” (as played by Fiennes)…
… At this point in his life, he (according to Fienne’s own words) is “a hustler… a loser. Lenny has slid down from the code of behavior of the ‘upright policeman’ to selling his ILLEGAL form of visual narcotic…”
… The narcotic involved is called “Playback”, & consists of a device placed on the head that allows a “VIRTUAL REALITY” to be experienced thru the playing of “tapes” (discs) directly into a person’s mind via its sort of “glasses”...
… Since it’s so powerful -- & often involved in violently “rough” & sexually-based activities --, it’s been outlawed by those in power & confined only for “governmental” use…
… As the movie begins, we see tough guys in a car who put on stocking caps & grab their guns before going into a restaurant to effect a ROBBERY… Eventually, you realize that what we see is actually Ralph in the midst of viewing a “PLAYBACK” tape recorded BY the robbers, which is being offered for sale by a hyper guy named Tick (RICHARD EDSON)…
… He wants Ralph to buy it from him, but Ralph is uneager about the price because of the ending of the privately-made recording, & reduces the price because “You know, I don’t deal in ‘SNUFF’ {recorded deaths}—” as this one does…
… Tick shows another recording he has for sale, more sexually-oriented one. Ralph comments that, it’s better than the usual “soaps” ones he’s offered, & agrees to buy it. Tick says, he knows Ralph likes seeing “street life’ documented on recordings…
… As Ralph travels thru the city in his car, we see the place is filled with loads of people carrying GUNS, along with a heavily-armed POLICE presence all over the place… At one point, Ralph stops & works to convince a young guy to use a “S.Q.U.I.D.” recording device to wirelessly record his making love to a woman, for sale to Ralph’s “Playback” clients…
… Other recordings are eventually shown in the film, and one portrays cops trying to forcibly pull a pretty girl (possibly “Iris”, played by BRIGITTE BAKO) out of a subway train thru the glass of its door…
… Soon, it’s the day of New Year’s Eve... We see two white members of the Los Angeles Police department secretly stop a car holding a clearly-rich, powerful, well known black RAP star Jeriko One (GLENN PLUMMER) and a band member. The older cop is Burton Steckler (VINCENT D'ONOFRIO), & his partner is Dwayne Engelman (WILLIAM FICHTNER)...
… Glenn demands to know why they’ve been stopped, Vincent is clearly not impressed by him or his threats to complain about the actions of the cops-- & the two cops promptly KILL him & his friend for no apparent reason… Is what we’ve just seen actually footage on another “PLAYTIME” recording someone has made?!…
… The scene shifts, & we see someone ask Keith (JOE URLA), “… are you a COP?”, & he says no… Ralph discusses “virgin” brains that have never experienced the “Playback” narcotic-like recordings, & wonders if the devices are now being used to replace BODY wiretaps in various police-related & similar cases… A comment is made that, “This is not like ‘TV, only better’-- this is LIFE!”…
… To earn a living, Ralph continues trying to sell other people various examples of “Playback” recordings, promises he can get whatever people want as subjects, & says about himself that, “I’m the Santa Claus of the SUBCONSCIOUS”…
… He keeps urging people to try the devices he offers (although one -- a tough friend named Lornette “Mace” Mason, played by ANGELA BASSETT – says she’s never tried it, & DOESN’T WANT to since it’s addictive & possibly dangerous)…
… At one point, Ralph meets an old Police buddy who’s still on the force, named Max Peltier (TOM SIZEMORE), who urges him to not “pine” over an ex-girlfriend who seems to have disappeared... Ralph learns that Iris is in TROUBLE & “it’s a BAD situation” for her…
… In the fast-paced action, we meet various other characters Ralph deals with or knows, such as Philo Gant (MICHAEL WINCOTT), the manager of Rap superstar Jeriko One, & famous “well-connected” singer Faith Justin (JULIETTE LEWIS)… At one point, as Ralph is dealing with someone, his car is towed away & the towtruck driver refuses to turn it loose for a bribe offered....
… Ralph is always “hopping”, trying to encourage people like Mr. Fumitsu (JIM ISHIDA) to get “wired” with one of his devices... You see talks in Angela’s limo (as she refuses to allow the device in her car), in a club named “The Retinal Fetish”, and various dealings with Philo and Tick & others…
… We keep seeing things (like a girl being handcuffed) that we later realize are “WIRED” scenes that have been recorded to disk rather than being seen “live” at the time it happens… While such scenes are intriguing at times, they also makes the story somewhat hard to “FOLLOW” at various points (since it’s confounding as to what’s “real”, & makes things UNCLEAR as to what’s truly happening”)…
… Ralph is seen increasingly working with Angela to try to track down what’s really occurring with his close friends, since more & more kidnappings & apparent murders are happening… Ralph tells Michael about a guy who’s seen kidnapping Brigette on a recording who seemingly makes her watch what may be her own death on a recorded disk, apparently because “He needs an audience...”
… At one point, Ralph is BEATEN UP by some guys, & martial arts expert Angela arrives & SAVES him from them… Time lines and characters keep “shifting” in the recordings we see, & we at one stage see Ralph & Angela race off to try to SAVE Brigette (Iris) in “real” time…
… Angela & Ralph try to salvage the recording of the incident with Iris, & are chased by a bunch of bad guys who shoot at her car. As they do that, Angela reassures Ralph that her vehicle is “bullet-RESISTANT”, to which frightened Ralph exclaims, “Whatever happened to bullet-PROOF?!”… When their car is caught, the bad guys try to set it on FIRE, wherein Angela drives the car into the ocean to try to escape…
… In time, Ralph gets hold of a recording of a guy with Faith (Juliette) in a hot tub, & he at one point comments that bad guys they’ve seen are clearly COPS operating illegally… He tries to get Angela to VIEW a revealing “wire” recording in his possession… On the recording, we see cops pulling over Iris & another girl who they work to “rough-up”…
… We see more actions by the 2 “rogue” cops who killed Jeriko, & we see cops didn’t learn who Iris was working with, which Ralph feels must leave them “scared”… We also learn Tick is attacked by some people, & things seem to spin more & more out of control…
… At one point, Tom said he’d heard of a “DEATH SQUAD” going on in a group of cops, & comments he thinks it best that the facts be kept “hidden” lest a group of blacks start an all-out war over the killing of popular Jeriko…
… Ralph tells him he’s concerned that people who attacked Iris & Tick would likely go after singer Faith (who later is seen saying that “I was trying to keep you OUT of it—”)…
… We hear it revealed that Philo (Michael) had seemingly gotten “obsessed” with using the “Playback” device, was afraid that Jeriko was apparently going to “dump” him as a manager, & thus he’d sent girls to his table at one point…
… But, Philo, who once had possession of the most damaging “Playback” tape showing the killing of Jeriko, LOSES control of the recording, & is very worried that he’d lose his OTHER acts if word got out that he’d been keeping Jeriko under “surveillance”…
… Ralph tells his feeling that the killer knew just where Iris was hiding out. As he tries to track down perpetrators, Angela keeps WARNING him that things are “a setup” & the girl doesn’t really love him anymore. The Millennium PARTY soon starts appearing on the streets of L.A. near the Hotel Bonaventure…
… As they seek out the bad cops, Ralph tells Angela she should go to the Police Commissioner with the story of the BAD cops, as he seems to be one of the few clearly honest people in the department…
… She at one point tries to get that guy to VIEW the damaging recording they’d gotten hold of regarding Jeriko’s murder, but some of the bad guys go AFTER her, catch her, & she manages to escape…
… Ralph keeps trying to track down who’s really been in CHARGE of the actions of the bad cops, enters a large suite of a rich person, & sees his own name on an envelope there holding a “Playback” recording…
… Soon, one of his friends is found dead, & he realizes one of his OTHER friends is behind the whole spree of illegal activities & wanted Ralph “FRAMED” for a bunch of things including the killing of Jeriko’s manager Gant (Michael)…
… In the midst of the New Year’s celebrations on the street, we see the 2 “rogue” cops (who’d killed Jeriko) going after Angela, a S.W.A.T. team arrives, the crowd gets involved, & mayhem ensues…
… Who IS the leader of the bad cops?… What is Juliette’s real involvement in the case?… Will Angela & Ralph be saved from those targeting them?… Will the bad guys get “caught” in the end?… As usual, you’ll need to see the film to learn the answers…
… Director Bigelow demonstrates in this film that she can be very effective in showing an impressive kinetic energy (as she later did in her recent “The Hurt Locker”)… However, although the film is quite well-acted overall, I found it often overly CONFUSING -- with its frequent scenes from “Playback” recordings that you don’t know if they’re “real” or live happenings, the back & forth flipping between numerous shady characters, etc…
… The action alternates between well-done & OVER-done, as does the often-unpleasant sex & violence shown in the “Playback” recordings…
… Since it’s frequently hard to “FOLLOW” the story, it’s difficult to fully ENJOY it: there’s almost “TOO MUCH” happening to allow you to really appreciate it all... It’s fascinating on various levels, but only a limited “success” as an overall accomplishment…
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SPECIAL INFO from the DVD = KATHRYN BIGELOW’s TECHNICAL DETAILS
… The DVD includes some interesting added elements and commentaries… Writer Cameron states that, “I was fascinated by the idea of the millennium-- what would it mean and what it wouldn’t mean… I also wanted to do a kind of REDEMPTION motif. I always had in mind the fate of this one guy, Lenny Nero {Ralph Fiennes}, and his ability to find what’s right and wrong. If one person can elevate themselves or redeem themselves, then, by extrapolation, we all can.”
… Bigelow states that she was “compelled” to make the film: “Is this the end of the world or the beginning of another one? That’s the core of Strange Days and what moved me… The interlocking story of Lenny and Mace becomes a parable in noirish disguise, a story about the pervasive need to watch, to see. It calibrates the fragile balance between viewer and viewed, screen and audience, spectacle as medium and subject. It puts us all in the picture.”…
… Singer Faith Justin {Juliette Lewis} is described in the script as having a voice which is “a scream, an inchoate wail, a police siren… The pain and rage of an entire hell-bent tormented planet on its eve of judgment. Lost in the song, Faith has found herself.”…
… Director Bigelow had been a fan of Angela Bassett from her work in “BOYZ ‘N THE HOOD”. Angela herself wanted to do the film once she saw the script: “{In most movies,} Men get to have all the fun and do all the fights. In this film I get to save the day. In reading it, you say, ‘Oh, this character was probably a guy at one point, but I’m glad they turned him into a woman.’ But then you hear that the character was ALWAYS perceived as a black woman and it’s just really cool and very right.”…
… As to the SET-design, that was done by production designer Lilly Kilvert (who was an Oscar nominee for her work on “LEGENDS OF THE FALL”). Regarding the fact that the film was planned to show a world just 4 years ahead in time, she commented that, “Highways, buildings and even car design aren’t going to change that radically… What is going to change are the SMALL things like telephones and computers. Our focus was on the DETAILS…”
… Further, she commented that, “One of the decisions we made was to translate wealth into space. Space is all there is left to buy, really…”
… Her biggest challenge was the end-of-the-millennium PARTY, which was originally envisioned as involving 100,000 people in downtown L.A. They couldn’t afford to pay for such a live crowd (or even 10-12,000 extras), so they instead organized a CONCERT:
… They closed off four city blocks near the hotel, hung banners from lampposts, erected stages and two stadium-sized video screens (to show celebrations around the world), and advertised the concert on radio stations and in print…
… The producers provided LIVE MUSIC, and that -- plus raffling off prizes such as trips to Hawaii – brought in a consistent stream of energetic people, who were then filmed as “background” for the Celebration scenes in the movie…
… In the SPECIAL FEATURES on the DVD, you get to see two DELETED scenes which were basically removed because the film’s running time had to be shortened (as the film was already unusually long for its day):
… “Busting the Gain” was a very long scene wherein Ralph stops a woman who was about to attack Angela. He wonders if things were done as a “setup” to try to get him to come in and find a body… As he tries to learn things by viewing footage on a recording, he comes close to “FRYING” his brain by doing that… But, it’s important to him to go thru that to get facts, since he needs to see more details in the recording as the woman involved “sees herself DYING” at one point…
… “Into the Bonaventure” was a shorter scene which better explained (in more detail) how Ralph arranged to get himself & Angela into the sold-out party in the hotel-- which basically involved BLACKMAILING 2 camera operators at the event that he’d reveal their use of the illegal S.Q.U.I.D. “Playback” devices (he’d provided) if they didn’t give him their Media badges (which they soon give over)…
… The film also contains a COMMENTARY track by Kathryn Bigelow-- but it’s NOT the usual commentary wherein a director speaks of various things as the overall movie unfolds before our eyes scene-by-scene. Instead, it’s nearly an hour-long commentary on the massive TECHNICAL side of the filming of the movie’s initial 4-minute “p.o.v.” (“Point Of View”) restaurant-theft scene (one of like 9 such “p.o.v.” scenes shown thruout the movie, according to an intro by co-producer Jaffe)…
… For those interested in the technical side of film-making, the commentary (clearly recorded during a talk to some audience) is a fascinating explanation of the rigors of the behind-the-scenes side of making the movie:
… Ms. Bigelow explained that the concept of the film was to have the ability to record directly off a person’s cerebral cortex to make the “Playback” disks offered for sale. The problem was, how could they capture that effect on FILM?…
… On videotape, they were able to do a 6-minute test film-- but that couldn’t be duplicated on 35mm film due to the need to have short-lasting film MAGAZINES and large equipment…
… For like a YEAR, she tested out all kinds of film cameras, and NONE would give the effect she wanted by providing a mobility that the human eye could provide. One year before they started filming, they specially BUILT an 8-pound camera that could fit in one hand. She wanted to avoid the “floating” effect given by Steadi-cam devices, & searched for a good compromise:
… When she’d shot “POINT BREAK”, they’d used a “pogo” type device that gave the effect of NATURAL-looking (rather than “floating”) movements during fast action, & they adapted a version of that for use with the newly-designed camera for the short “clips” they wanted to use in this film…
… She felt the combination helped give the audience a quick “learning curve” idea of what “Playback” was designed to do for its users…
… Kathryn then goes into a massively-detailed step-by-step explanation of exactly HOW the opening “Restaurant robbery” scene was shot: She wanted an “unbroken”-looking sequence, & they also had to experiment to INVENT the “SHREDDING” look and sounds given at the end of the sequence:
… Although it may look “simple” on-screen, it took like a YEAR to devise a way that the effect would look “digital” rather than as a video artifact. They sped-up images, kept re-working them over & over, & decomposed & deconstructed the images, doing it all “on the FLY”...
… That meant that they can never exactly duplicate the image again, since there were like 100 different versions with various solarizing, saturation changes, pixelating, etc… “It’d NEVER been done before--”, & they had to do similar work at digitally shredding the SOUND in the scenes…
… She didn’t want to lose a “generation” quality-wise by what they did, & so they simply had to keep re-working things time & again, with the end-result of making it look “simple”, tho it was NOT that way at all!…
… As to the LOCATION shooting, that was also difficult: the street where they shot was like 5 miles away from the restaurant they’d used. To shoot the robbers in the car, they had to remove the roof & trunk of the car…
… One person held the specially-designed camera, with huge work done at synchronizing things for pulling on the stocking over the face, while a stunt man & focus-puller were situated in the trunk area, “draped”-over things like a seat…
… The restaurant scene was “continuous”, with only a small number of “breaks” such as when they run from the cops that suddenly arrive. There was thus a huge amount that had to be done in one take, along with lighting a 360o view, and it took like 4.5 hours to set that up: The stunt man is the “right” hand that you see in the car in the film, & “It’s almost a kind of DANCE” that had to be done…
… Kathryn had done a WALK-THRU before the filming, to plan “whips”, cuts, & other effects she wanted to do: “It is so WELL-REHEARSED—”… She then did a video storyboard to plan out how to do things at the proper “speed” (of movement) desired…
… The small specially-designed camera is held in one hand, & the guy holding it listens to her directions piped into his ear, while he’s viewing a 1” x 1” video monitor placed on his head so he can see things in a sort of “overview”…
… Overall, the camera guy had to wear like 28 pounds of equipment as he held the camera, & it was all very difficult. Fortunately, she & the camera guy had done a lot of work together, going all the way back to “BLUE STEEL” (in 1989), & thus the 15 takes they had to do in the car went very WELL overall…
… They couldn’t change the aspect ratio, & it was too expensive and difficult to try to “morph” things (which she felt would be bad as that’d lose her at least 1 generation quality-wise, and HD equipment would be too big & cumbersome to use)…
… At one point in the commentary, Ms. Bigelow talks about using a “lipstick” type camera in filming “POINT BREAK” (in 1991). As she said, you have to know all the work done to APPRECIATE the fantastic degree of COORDINATION required to film as she wanted in “Strange Days”…
… To a question, she said, it was a REAL helicopter that was used at the end of the “robbery” scene… She then talks about all the precautions taken in filming a guy jumping between buildings…
… It’s really amazing, the degree of WORK that can go into making movies, & particularly how much is done at times (such as in “STRANGE DAYS”) to try to make things appear very “simple” when they’re not at all that way in actuality…
… This movie is the kind that you probably need to see at least a COUPLE of times to fully “understand” and appreciate!…
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