!!!! MILD SPOILERS !!!!
I can imagine Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron marching into the excutive offices with a movie idea . One of them pitches an ideas driven movie about virtual reality while the other pitches an old fashioned character driven thriller about a couple of corrupt cops wanting to get hands on evidence that will implicate them in a crime . The studio exec stratches his chin , can`t decide what movie he wants then has a sudden brain wave of merging the two plots into the same movie .
That might have happened , it might not have happened but watching STRANGE DAYS I had the gut instinct that somewhere along the line someone had engineered the two above plots into the one movie . All through the running time I felt there were two screenplays trying to escape . Needless to say STRANGE DAYS starts to collapse under the weight of its ideas . There`s also several more unnecessary sub plots such as racial politics , rising crime levels and the mechanics of the music biz which by the end don`t feel like they really belonged in this movie . Not only that they also add to an overlong running time
I awarded STRANGE DAYS 6 out of 10 . What stopped me from awarding it lower marks is the amount of kinetic energy director Bigelow has infused into the film , it`s by no means an unwatchable thriller despite its flaws and with a cast featuring Fiennes , Basset , Lewis , Sizemore , D`Onfrio and Fitchner at least there`s some well known character actors on display . Saome complained at the time that Cameron should have directed the movie instead of Bigelow , but there`s not much wrong with the directing unlike the script which was written by Cameron
How`s this for a VR plot . A corrupt state frames a heroic and noble subversive by implanting memories of sexual abuse into the minds of children thereby framing the hero and jailing him as a child molestor . A deeply disturbing and adult premise for a sci-fi drama , and one that had been done before in the opening episode of BLAKE`S 7 . So you see the rather weak premise of STRANGE DAYS in comparison ?
I can imagine Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron marching into the excutive offices with a movie idea . One of them pitches an ideas driven movie about virtual reality while the other pitches an old fashioned character driven thriller about a couple of corrupt cops wanting to get hands on evidence that will implicate them in a crime . The studio exec stratches his chin , can`t decide what movie he wants then has a sudden brain wave of merging the two plots into the same movie .
That might have happened , it might not have happened but watching STRANGE DAYS I had the gut instinct that somewhere along the line someone had engineered the two above plots into the one movie . All through the running time I felt there were two screenplays trying to escape . Needless to say STRANGE DAYS starts to collapse under the weight of its ideas . There`s also several more unnecessary sub plots such as racial politics , rising crime levels and the mechanics of the music biz which by the end don`t feel like they really belonged in this movie . Not only that they also add to an overlong running time
I awarded STRANGE DAYS 6 out of 10 . What stopped me from awarding it lower marks is the amount of kinetic energy director Bigelow has infused into the film , it`s by no means an unwatchable thriller despite its flaws and with a cast featuring Fiennes , Basset , Lewis , Sizemore , D`Onfrio and Fitchner at least there`s some well known character actors on display . Saome complained at the time that Cameron should have directed the movie instead of Bigelow , but there`s not much wrong with the directing unlike the script which was written by Cameron
How`s this for a VR plot . A corrupt state frames a heroic and noble subversive by implanting memories of sexual abuse into the minds of children thereby framing the hero and jailing him as a child molestor . A deeply disturbing and adult premise for a sci-fi drama , and one that had been done before in the opening episode of BLAKE`S 7 . So you see the rather weak premise of STRANGE DAYS in comparison ?