When considering films that capture the cyberpunk terror felt by those at the cusp of the new millennium, many’s first thought lands on a film so enduring, it's found a way to resonate with both the left and the right: The Matrix. With the characters’ leather-clad ensemble and unforgettably quotable dialogue, The Matrix remains a favorite of Y2K anxiety against a sci-fi/action backdrop. But, there is a predecessor to The Matrix that is criminally underrated and deserves some time in the spotlight: 1995’s Strange Days.
Kathryn Bigelow, famously known for her Oscar-winning The Hurt Locker, is renowned for her approach to action filmmaking. By the early 90s, she had already directed Point Break, Blue Steel, and Near Dark. Midway through the decade, she would direct Strange Days. James Cameron had the initial idea for the film and presented a treatment to Bigelow, knowing he wanted her to direct. Together, along with Jay Cocks, they crafted a poignant and timely script.
Bigelow became synonymous with blending genres, and Strange Days created a science fiction landscape with noir elements at its forefront. The film follows Los Angeles ex-cop and current pleasure marketeer Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), who buys and sells SQUID recordings, a Superconducting Quantum Interference Device, in which first-person POV footage is captured and transferred to a disc to then be experienced by users. When a snuff disc with his name on it features the rape and murder of Iris, a prostitute he knew, Lenny, along with his friends Mace (Angela Basset) and Max (Tom Sizemore), must figure out who did this and why they sent him the footage. However, it's not just a regular Sunday. It is New Year's Eve 1999, and chaos has erupted in the streets. Los Angeles is a wasteland of crime and apocalyptic doom. As one radio guest says, "The economy sucks, gas is over three bucks a gallon, and fifth-grade kids are shooting each other at recess. The whole thing sucks." But, replete with diegetic performances of underground punk bands, Strange Days understands that doomsday will be one big, pissed-off party.
However, this genre-blend is one of multiple factors critics point to in trying to assess why the film bombed at the box office. With a budget of $42 million, it would only recuperate shy of $8 million. Writer and professor of film Will Brooker cross-examined critic reviews and fan theories for the film's lack of success and identified that the studio, unsure how best to market the film, landed on a popular common denominator: sex. With a tagline "you know you want it," viewers likely expected a sexy tech-thriller and were shocked and disgusted to find the "sex" in the film was anything but sexy.
The Political Context of Strange Days
The reality of a black man being pulled over, badly beaten, or killed by white police, and the crime being recorded on video, only for the police to be acquitted of their crime, is one deeply ingrained in U.S. history and consciousness. In Strange Days, the death of prominent Black activist and musician Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer) sends Los Angeles spiraling with suspicion and anger. This storyline was clearly inspired by Rodney King and the rage that erupted in South Central Los Angeles following the acquittal of his LAPD perpetrators. NPR wrote that, "During the five days of unrest, there were more than 50 riot-related deaths — including 10 people who were shot and killed by LAPD officers and National Guardsmen. More than 2,000 people were injured, and nearly 6,000 alleged looters and arsonists were arrested."
A year before the film's release, Clinton signed the 1994 Crime Bill into law, now considered one of several factors responsible for mass incarceration, alongside other consequences, including punitive punishment and increased use of the death penalty.
Angela Bassett's Mace is notoriously against experiencing SQUID, but when a disc captured by Iris reveals the truth behind Jeriko One's death, Bassett ‘jacks in’ for the first time and delivers a prescient (and personal favorite) line in the film: "I see the world opening up and swallowing us all." Mace demands more from Lenny, who does not seem to understand the social responsibility of the tape. Perhaps audiences were unwelcoming of a Black woman demanding accountability so eloquently; perhaps they were tired of science fiction that was too real, too relevant, or too sympathetic to the rioters.
What's Gender Got To Do With It?
Booker also investigates gender essentialism in audience reactions, especially among those who like the film. "There is a sense of novelty in the praise for Bigelow's successful handling of a 'guy thing,'... Cameron's ability to shift from the grubby future war of Aliens to the doomed historical romance of Titanic is, by contrast, never mentioned.” This is especially interesting when Cameron himself admitted, "On this film, I was always pushing to make it more romantic, for example. And she was always pushing to make it harder-edged."
In her Cyborg Manifesto, Donna J. Haraway writes, "By the late twentieth century, our time, a mythic time, we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism—in short, cyborgs. The cyborg is our ontology; it gives us our politics,” which incredibly captures the ethos of Strange Days and what it hopes to overcome. Haraway's book even compares the identity of women of color to the othering of cyborgs: "Feminist cyborg stories have the task of recoding communication and intelligence to subvert command and control," which is an interesting point, as Ace rejects SQUIDS but understands her responsibility of witnessing Jeriko One’s death. Mace is the one who wants to show the footage of Jeriko One's death to the world, even if it starts a war, and it is her public beating that forces the crowd to riot.
Dance Me to the End of Love
Strange Days is a suitable foil to The Matrix in many ways. Both films offer insight into the human condition through technology, but in The Matrix, the characters must 'plug in' to interact with the world; in Strange Days, they must counter the urge to 'jack in' and put down the SQUIDS to witness the present moment.
What again distinguishes the film from The Matrix is the main character. Lenny Nero– notice the irony that an 'r' separates it from the identity of Keanu Reeves's character in The Matrix– is not the polished, heroic figure we are used to seeing in science fiction, the genius with all the answers, ‘the one.’ He is deeply flawed, putting himself and others in danger for the sake of someone who never actually needed saving. The love story that emerges in the film, not between Lenny and his ex Faith (Juliette Lewis), but between Lenny and Mace, excellently strikes the balance between Cameron’s desire for romance and Bigelow’s desire for edge, a love found in a hopeless place and piercing through the Y2K crowd.
Strange Days concludes with a grand celebration and countdown to the apocalypse. It's not nearly as damning as it could be on the institutions responsible for brutality, ultimately having some degree of faith in “good cops,” but it's a frighteningly realistic depiction of a world we still know all too well. With its biting acknowledgment of racial tension, tech dependence, and a killer soundtrack, it deserves a resurgence in our social consciousness.