After waiting for many years, Strange Days is finally available on video on demand. I've been trying to understand why the James Cameron film from 1995 was held out for so long, but two of his other movies with 20th Century Fox, The Abyss and True Lies, have also been peculiarly absent from streaming services.
Strange Days had the distinguished honor of being my top favorite movie of all time until it got replaced by Spy Game with Robert Redford and Brad Pitt.
While Cameron wrote and produced Strange Days, Kathryn Bigelow, who was his wife at the time, directed the hyper-kinetic, very intense sci-fi action thriller that takes place at the turn of the last century.
Kathryn Bigelow did Strange Days over a decade before she made The Hurt Locker and Zero Dark Thirty, and in my opinion, Strange Days is still her best movie. She established herself as one the greatest action film directors and is in the same league as her male counterparts.
Starring Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and Tom Sizemore, Strange Days begins in the last couple of days of 1999, and there's a technology that lets you record and playback people's aural and visual experiences à la Brainstorm. It was initially developed for the government and then ended up in the black market.
Strange Days is pretty violent, and I should warn there's a rape scene, but the superbly directed and edited film has such a vast and rich story, and it's not a James Cameron movie if it doesn't have courageous and strong female characters.
Strange Days was one of the first films I saw with Tom Sizemore in a major role, and he got to work with some Hollywood legends, like Robert De Niro in Heat and Steven Spielberg in Saving Private Ryan. I was delightfully surprised to learn he's a fellow Michigander who went to Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, where I almost attended.
Unfortunately, mainly due to substance abuse, Sizemore's life went through some rough patches, and quite sadly, his recent passing hardly made the news. He had so much potential, and I will always remember him being a standout in movies.
While Strange Days is no longer my top favorite movie of all time, I still think Kathryn Bigelow is one the greatest filmmakers of all time. And it's not a top-grossing film from James Cameron, like Titanic and Avatar, but Strange Days is a must-see, especially given its direction, writing, and memorable characters and cast members.
Rest in peace, Tom Sizemore.
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