Strange Days

**Strange Days** is a 1995 science fiction film about Y-2K.

## Plot

In the last two days of 1999, Los Angeles has become a dangerous war zone. As a group of criminals rob a Chinese restaurant, the event is recorded by a robber wearing a SQUID, an illegal electronic device that records memories and physical sensations directly from the wearer's cerebral cortex onto a MiniDisc-like device for playback. Lenny Nero, a former LAPD officer turned black marketeer of SQUID recordings, buys the robbery clip from his main supplier, Tick. Elsewhere, a prostitute named Iris, who is a former friend of Lenny's ex-girlfriend Faith Justin, is being chased by LAPD officers Burton Steckler and Dwayne Engelman. Iris escapes on a subway car but Engleman pulls off her wig, revealing a SQUID recorder headset.

Lenny pines for Faith and relies on emotional support from his two best friends: bodyguard and limousine driver Lornette "Mace" Mason and private investigator Max Peltier. Mace has unrequited feelings for Lenny from when he was still a cop and stepped in as a dependable father figure for her son after her boyfriend was arrested on drug charges, but disapproves of his SQUID-dealing business. While Lenny and Max are drinking together at a bar, Iris drops a SQUID disc through the sunroof of Lenny's car before it is towed away. Mace picks Lenny up and takes him to a nightclub where Faith is going to sing. There, Lenny receives a SQUID disc from a contact and unsuccessfully tries to get Faith away from her new boyfriend, Philo Gant. Gant is a music industry mogul who managed the recently-slain rapper Jeriko One.

While in the car with Mace, Lenny plays the disc the contact gave him and watches Iris being brutally raped and murdered by an attacker at the Sunset Regent hotel. As they approach the hotel, Iris is taken out on a stretcher. The next day, they take the disc to Tick, who cannot identify the source of the recording, but recalls that Iris was looking for Lenny. Mace deduces that Iris may have left something in Lenny's car, and the two go to the impound and find Iris's disc. Steckler and Engleman appear and demand the disc at gunpoint, but Lenny and Mace escape in her car before being forced to stop at a dock. Steckler pours gasoline on the car and sets it on fire, but Mace drives it into the harbor, extinguishing the flames. When they reach the surface, the cops have left.

Mace takes Lenny to her brother's house and they watch Iris's disc, showing Iris was with Jeriko One when Steckler and Engleman pulled him over and murdered him because his anti-police lyrics and activism incited protests against the LAPD. The two return to Tick, whom Max reveals has been rendered brain-dead from forceful exposure to amplified SQUID signals. Lenny fears Iris' attacker covered his tracks by "killing" Tick and will come after Faith. Back at the nightclub, Lenny and Mace confront Faith, who reveals that Philo is afraid Iris' disc would reveal that he kept his artists under surveillance. Lenny and Mace disagree over whether to trade the disc to Philo for Faith's freedom or release it publicly, which could incite a citywide riot. As midnight approaches, Lenny and Mace sneak into a private party at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel that Philo is hosting for the city's wealthy elite. Lenny has a change of heart and tells Mace to give the disc to deputy police commissioner Palmer Strickland.

In Philo's penthouse suite, Lenny finds Philo brain-dead on the floor and another disc, revealing that Max and Faith are lovers, and that Max "fried" Philo's brain with an amplified recording of them feigning rape. Faith explains to Lenny that Philo hired Max to kill Iris, but when Philo wanted Faith dead as part of the coverup, Max decided to frame Lenny for the murders. Lenny and Max struggle in a fight, which culminates with Lenny throwing Max off the balcony to his death. Meanwhile, on the crowded streets, Mace subdues Steckler and Engelman but other officers take down Mace. Strickland arrives and orders Mace's release and to arrest Steckler and Engelman for murder. Engelman commits suicide; Steckler threatens Mace but the officers gun him down. Lenny then finds Mace and the two share a kiss as the crowd celebrates the turn of the new century.