There are some promising aspects to the set-up and the plot, but it doesn't hold up for the entire film. The whole big revelation at the end is not a worthy compensation and much too obvious. Fiennes' character work is fine but the way the character is written makes him generically likable in a Spielberg kind of way and it put me off. Fiennes and Bassett just do not have any chemistry; I appreciate that it was pretty daring for them to have an inter-racial leading couple, but these particular actors didn't have it together. Bassett is one of those characters created in a petri dish by action movie screenwriters -- the single mom who takes care of her family and is also an expert at martial arts and killing people.
As the movie proceeds at its agonizing pace towards the obvious and overblown ending, you can't help but suspect that the producer Jim Cameron probably planned to direct this film but bailed on that because he could tell that it just did not have the fundamentals of a good film. But much of the ephemeral stuff attached to the movie is equally onerous. I never saw the appeal of Juliette Lewis as an actress, but this film not only put her past her ability in that department but exposes us to not one but two solo performances of her bland alterna-rock singing. Combined with the weak flow by the supposed superstar rapper Jeriko (Glenn Plummer) that would have seemed stale in the early 80s, the movie is very terrible in terms of the music. In fact the strangest thing about the movie really is that it is set in 1999, so that it was outdated almost the moment when it came out. Yet it promised crazy technological advances in that 3 year span, not to mention riots and craziness that never happened on 12/31/99. So again, you have to think that the movie was supposed to be made in the late 80s or the early 90s and that it just took forever to produce it, to the point where they just pooped it out at the last minute. And that's about all you can say about the movie in the final analysis. Horrible supporting performances from Lewis and Tom Sizemore, mis-cast leads in Bassett and Fiennes playing characters far less interesting than they're capable of, a pointless and hackneyed cyberpunk story -- it's a major dud.
p.s. not sure if anyone mentioned here, but the original script title for "Blade Runner" was "Strange Days." Perhaps that was an homage, I don't know.
As the movie proceeds at its agonizing pace towards the obvious and overblown ending, you can't help but suspect that the producer Jim Cameron probably planned to direct this film but bailed on that because he could tell that it just did not have the fundamentals of a good film. But much of the ephemeral stuff attached to the movie is equally onerous. I never saw the appeal of Juliette Lewis as an actress, but this film not only put her past her ability in that department but exposes us to not one but two solo performances of her bland alterna-rock singing. Combined with the weak flow by the supposed superstar rapper Jeriko (Glenn Plummer) that would have seemed stale in the early 80s, the movie is very terrible in terms of the music. In fact the strangest thing about the movie really is that it is set in 1999, so that it was outdated almost the moment when it came out. Yet it promised crazy technological advances in that 3 year span, not to mention riots and craziness that never happened on 12/31/99. So again, you have to think that the movie was supposed to be made in the late 80s or the early 90s and that it just took forever to produce it, to the point where they just pooped it out at the last minute. And that's about all you can say about the movie in the final analysis. Horrible supporting performances from Lewis and Tom Sizemore, mis-cast leads in Bassett and Fiennes playing characters far less interesting than they're capable of, a pointless and hackneyed cyberpunk story -- it's a major dud.
p.s. not sure if anyone mentioned here, but the original script title for "Blade Runner" was "Strange Days." Perhaps that was an homage, I don't know.