STRANGE DAYS (1995): Elaborately derivative, unpleasantly sordid cyberpunk thriller, directed by Kathryn Bigelow, set in Los Angeles in late December 1999 (still four years in the future when the film was released) and starring Ralph Fiennes as Lenny, a disgraced former vice cop and down-at-heels dealer in black market recordings for a technology that lets the user experience someone else's prerecorded memories (essentially the "simstim" rigs from William Gibson's Sprawl novels). After a former acquaintance leaves him a recording that could set a match to a city already perpetually teetering on the brink of riot — and which seems somehow connected to Lenny's estranged ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis) and her sleazy producer/pimp/boyfriend Philo (Michael Wincott) — Lenny ends up on the run, aided only by his former partner Max (Tom Sizemore) and his inexplicably loyal driver/bodyguard/ex-girlfriend Mace (Angela Bassett, in a role obviously inspired by Gibson's Molly Millions, albeit without the hardware).

The story, which is by James Cameron, borrows liberally from William Gibson throughout (with an icky soupçon of Michael Powell's PEEPING TOM), but by keeping the setting to the then very near future, it remains topical and largely avoids reducing the cyberpunk trappings to a series of rote aesthetic gestures in the manner of the R. Talsorian CYBERPUNK games. However, a bunch of important narrative elements just don't gel (Lenny, whom Fiennes plays as a sort of musty wet dishrag of a man, is not at all convincing as an ex-cop, and the idea that Mace is still carrying a torch for him is hard to credit), and it's often really ugly (in particular a horrifying rape/snuff sequence that's upsetting to watch even if you're forewarned).

Worse, the film then catastrophically undermines its own political throughline with a preposterous and infuriating cop-out ending that betrays the filmmakers' white liberal equivocation about policing and race. CONTAINS LESBIANS? Only in a brief and obvious performative simstim sequence. VERDICT: Intermittently compelling — particularly Bassett, who is magnificent in every respect and by far the best thing in the movie — but its sheer nastiness and the cowardly ending tend to overshadow its virtues. CWs apply for graphic sexual violence and police brutality.