thread: 2008-04-30 : Movies and TV
On 2008-05-06, Lisa Padol wrote:
Brand,
Interesting—I don't have a problem with the main character from Strange Days, Lenny, I think. (Checks IMDB) Yep, Lenny.
See, it isn't really sf—you probably know that already. It's noir / Chandler. It's even got the Old Flame singing a torch song. Okay, it's a, what, heavy metal torch song, but that's not the point.
So, Chandler, the one quote I know, or think I know, is "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean." And that's Lenny. Lenny is slime, but never scum. He is horrified by the murders. And, the reason Mace (Bassett) sticks by him is because, as the flashback shows, when she came home to see cops crawling all over the house, and rushed to find her child, Lenny was on it, sitting down with the kid, not in uniform, and reading to him. That's really all we need to know about him.
Oh, he's far from flawless—the Old Flame thing, the career choice, all that. But, when he sends Mace to the head of the police, the one man he thinks he can be sure is not corrupt, he is right. He has to be right.
No, my problem is with the murderer.
That said, I love, completely and utterly, that there is no uberconspiracy, and that the catalyst for the events of the movie was—L. A. traffic patterns.
That said, not only was the murderer just an "Oh, yeah, sure, I guess, but really, it could be anyone" to me, the riot scene at the end was oddly flat. I mean, here's the mob scene that the movie has been building to from the beginning, and it's just—a note off.
Just came from seeing Iron Man, far simpler, far more obvious, lots of fun—and my forehead is still smarting 2 hours after I smacked it at the throwaway reveal that Josh and I didn't see coming and so should have.
