Strange Days was one of the key films to teach me about Screenwriting. That’s not where people first go with this film. It has a singular look thanks to Kathryn Bigelow’s eye for visual detail and a crew that helped predict what would be trendy in 1999. It’s point-of-view vision of virtual reality requires a top-notch team to bring those scenes to life, but like I said I’m here for the screenplay.
Remove all the style and you have a perfectly structured Film Noir mystery thriller. Within a couple of days there are life-changing events on a global scale, a massive national scandal involving the police and a couple of leads in the eye of the hurricane, also dealing with the most challenging moment in their lives. Sounds like the makings of a great Hollywood blockbuster, but in the middle of the story there’s a horrific assault, something that the film never recovers from. I’d be curious to know discussions surrounding this scene, if there was debate over how much to show, knowing that too little will come off as a pulled punch, but too much turns off the audience.
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