Strange Days. 1995. USA. Directed by Kathryn Bigelow. Screenplay by James Cameron, Jay Cocks. With Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, Tom Sizemore. 35mm archival print courtesy of 20th Century Fox. 145 min.
Bigelow’s adrenaline rush of a film, deliriously unhinged and unnervingly prescient, is voyeurism at its best—and it's best appreciated on the big screen. On the eve of the new millennium, Los Angeles has become a city of anarchical violence and atavistic hunger, populated by hopped-up thrill seekers who vicariously enjoy the pleasure and pain of others through illicit video clips "jacked" directly into their brains. Amid such madness—where id has seemingly triumphed over superego—Ralph Fiennes is a black marketeer who witnesses the rape and murder of a young woman in a virtual snuff film he knows to be all too real.