While cyberpunk pioneer William Gibson waits for a decent adaptation of his work (the short Tomorrow Calling (1993), based on the short story The Gernsback Continuum, does the job but neither Johnny Mnemonic (1995) nor New Rose Hotel (1998) cut the mustard), Kathryn Bigelow’s Strange Days might be the best we can hope for. A coruscating take on American society and politics in the late 1990s, with one eye sceptical eye on the near future and the misuse of technology, it was a box office flop at the time but today, glossing over the turn of the millennium setting, it seems to have predicted a future that hasn’t quite come about yet but which seems to be just over the horizon – it’s only the specifics of the technology that haven’t caught up yet and that surely can’t be far behind.

It’s two days before the end of the millennium and Los Angeles is in flames. The streets are awash with rioters, an already fractious situation made all the worse by the recent assassination of popular and politically radical rapper Jeriko One (Glenn Plummer). None of this registers much on Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), a former cop and now dealer in illegal “clips”, first person experiences recorded on disc via SQUID (Superconducting Quantum Interference Device) headsets that allow the user to experience any number of new situations – legal or illegal. Lenny (“the Santa of the subconscious”) mostly trades in pornography, refusing to get involved in the morally bankrupt “blackjack” market, snuff clips that allow users to experience what it is to die. Lenny is pining for his former love Faith (Juliette Lewis), now a singer for – and lover of – sleazy music entrepreneur Philo Gant (Michael Wincott) and has all but retreated from the world into an an idealised virtuality with Faith that he’s addicted to. But when a prostitute friend, Iris (Brigitte Bako) is murdered and her rape and death recorded on a “clip” sent to Lenny, he finds himself drawn into a terrifying conspiracy that involves the murder of Jeriko One. His only friends – chauffeur and bodyguard Mace (Angela Bassett), private investigator Max (Tom Sizemore) and “clip” dealer Tick (Richard Edson) – are dragged into the nightmare too. But Lenny soon finds that the brave new world of 1999 Los Angeles is far more brutal and more treacherous than he ever suspected.

Strange Days was scripted by Jay Cocks and James Cameron and it wouldn’t be the last time that Cameron would borrow from William Gibson – his television series Dark Angel (2000-2002) centres around a bicycle courier in a near future city (though apart from that the two works are very dissimilar). There’s a lot in Strange Days that feels like it was taken from the pages of Gibson’s cyberpunk trilogy (Neuromancer (1984), Count Zero (1986) and Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988)) – the SQUID technology is not dissimilar to Gibson’s “simstim” and Lenny and Mace are very close relatives of Neuromancer‘s Case and Molly. And like Gibson’s earlier work, Strange Days a more-or-less conventional thriller dressed up in dazzling speculative concepts.

But there’s more than enough here that’s original to make it a fascinating film in its own right. The script is multi-faceted, taking aim at the inevitable criminal misuse of technology, the even worse misuse of power and the scourge of police corruption and racism. It also meditates on the nature of memory (“memories are meant to fade, Lenny,” Mace says. “They’re designed that way for a reason”), more relevant than ever now that memories of everything from births and marriages to what you ate for dinner yesterday are being captured in digital clarity and uploaded to the internet for posterity. It also ruminates on the nature of relationships in a hi-tech world where “used emotions” can be recycled over and over to the point of obsessiveness, blinding people to the very real emotional connections under their very noses in a world where escaping into a virtual past is as addictive, comforting and damaging as shooting up on heroine.

It’s heady stuff for what, on the surface, appears to be just another big-budget mainstream thriller. Stir in prophetic visions of “torture porn” and the “found footage” film and Strange Days has, despite its setting, aged surprisingly well. The technobabble is plentiful but easy enough to get the gist of even for those unversed in the linguistic richness of most cyberpunk. And besides it’s not the gadgetry that makes the film work – it’s just a vehicle to keep the plot moving. It’s the deeply textured world it sits in that makes Strange Days so immersive and believable.

This isn’t the Los Angeles of Blade Runner (1982) but it feels like the same city just a few years before (Strange Days is set in 1999, Blade Runner in 2019 and it’s not hard to see how the L.A. here could transform into Ridley Scott’s version twenty years on). It’s a dark and dangerous place, the streets alive with violence and brutality. It’s the worst nightmare of the 1940s and 50s film noir directors and writers made flesh.

It’s gorgeously designed (by Lilly Kilvert) and shot (by Matthew F. Leonetti) and Bigelow keeps the action bubbling along at breakneck speed, peeling away layers of the mystery so deftly that the films two-and-a-half hour running time never feels self-indulgent. Along the way she manages to find real pathos and humanity amid the political commentary and violence. The film suggests that the SQUID technology will end up being used for nefarious and morally deeply suspect ends (the porn was to be expected, the snuff movies “blackjacks” almost inevitable) but can also be used for good. Bigelow slips in a lovely little vignette where Lenny gives a disabled friend a simple “clip” of running along a beach, allowing him to use his legs virtually, reducing the man to tears of joy.

Strange Days was made only three years after the 1992 Los Angeles riots that broke out after videotape showed the police beating of Rodney King and it’s vision of the city on the brink of imploding is an extension of the public mood that prevailed at the time. As the responses to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 have shown, that mood prevails, and Strange Days is suddenly looking even more prophetic than ever. The film ends of a note of hope – though the question lingers, will anything actually change? It’s a question that seems more relevant than ever.

Strange Days divided critical opinion in 1995 and the public stayed away in droves. Maybe it was just a bit too plugged into the zeitgeist for its own good, exposing social and political sores that most felt were best left under wraps. Today, the “Y2K” stuff makes it feel as dated as any 1950s science fiction (a whole generation has grown up with no memory of “pre-millennial tension”) but its themes and its deeper concerns are as fresh as ever. Its political stance means that it will still be divisive today but it deserves better than it got at the time and surely is now ripe for rediscovery and re-evaluation.