Strange Days
Unclear and Present Danger
Jamelle Bouie
4.7 • 660 Ratings
🗓️ 24 July 2023
⏱️ 89 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For this week’s episode, Jamelle and John watched Kathryn Bigelow’s 1995 cult favorite Strange Days, a collaboration with James Cameron inspired by the political and social turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Although not quite “cyberpunk” — it isn’t a William Gibson pastiche like its contemporary Johnny Mnemonic — Strange Days borrows heavily from the genre and its various conceits. Strange Days stars Ralph Fiennes as protagonist Lenny Nero, Angela Bassett as “Mace,” Juliette Lewis as Faith and Tom Sizemore as Max, with appearances from Vincent D’Onofrio, Michael Wincott, William Fichtner and Richard Edson.
Here is a brief plot synopsis:
Set in the year 1999 during the last days of the old millennium, the movie tells the story of Lenny Nero, an ex-cop who now deals with data-discs containing recorded memories and emotions. One day he receives a disc which contains the memories of a murderer killing a prostitute. Lenny investigates and is pulled deeper and deeper in a whirl of blackmail, murder and rape. Will he survive and solve the case?
The tagline for Strange Days is “New Year’s Eve 1999. Anything is possible. Nothing is forbidden.”
Strange Days is available to stream on HBO Max and is available for rent or purchase on iTunes and Amazon. Our next episode is on the Hughes brother’s crime thriller Dead Presidents.
Connor Lynch produced this episode. Artwork by Rachel Eck.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Have you ever jacked in? Have you ever wired tripped? |
| 0:03.0 | You ready? |
| 0:04.0 | This is not like TV only better. |
| 0:07.0 | This is life. |
| 0:10.0 | It's a piece of somebody's life. |
| 0:13.0 | It's about the stuff that you can't have, right? |
| 0:16.0 | The forbidden fruit. Straight from the cerebral cortex. |
| 0:18.0 | I mean, you're there. You're doing it. You're feeling it. |
| 0:21.7 | You're beginning to see the possibilities here. |
| 0:27.0 | I am your main connection to the switchboard of souls. |
| 0:30.5 | I'm the magic man. |
| 0:32.7 | If this has got something to do with the war sooner or later, |
| 0:34.7 | it washes up on your beach. |
| 0:36.4 | Fan mail from some flounder. |
| 0:39.3 | I'm so what the fuck now! |
| 0:45.3 | The dark end of the street. How do you like it now? |
| 0:47.3 | You record it all. Everything. |
| 0:50.3 | And gives it to you. |
| 0:52.3 | Why me? |
| 0:53.3 | There's more of this whole thing than you think give us the |
| 0:55.6 | tape right now you're on how high up the food chain this thing goes you know what this tape could do |
| 1:02.4 | if it got out i see the world opening up and swallowing us all this is is conspiracy, paranoid. |
... |
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