Strange Days: Difference between revisions
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* [[Angry Black Man]]: Jeriko One, an outspoken gangster rapper and social activist.
* [[As You Know]]: A radio talk show caller explains how the country has really gone down the toilet in the last few years.
* [[Aw, Look -- They Really Do Love Each Other]]: {{spoiler|Nero and Mace
* [[Ax Crazy]]: Officer Steckler is clearly not a very well adjusted individual. {{spoiler|Neither is Max, it turns out
* [[Bald of Evil]]: {{spoiler|Max, after it's revealed he's a psychotic rapist who wears a wig fitted with a SQUID recorder
* [[Betty and Veronica]]: Played with: {{spoiler|Mace, the ass-kicking [[Action Girl]]}}, is the Betty; Faith, the flaky, emotionally unstable backstabber, is the Veronica. {{spoiler|Mace wins, partly because Faith slept with Lenny's best friend and conspired with him to frame him for murder, and partly because she's, well, awesome
* [[Bullying a Dragon]]: {{spoiler|Jeriko One ''really'' should have kept his mouth shut after the cops pulled him over. Granted, Steckler probably still would have shot him anyway
* [[Concert Climax]]: Everything comes to a head during Los Angeles' 1999 New Year's celebration.
* [[Concert Kiss]]: {{spoiler|Lenny and Mace, at the stroke of midnight, January 1st 2000
* [[Coolest Club Ever]]: Retinal Fetish. A [[Cyberpunk]] movie, indeed.
* [[Crapsack World]]: The 1992 Los Angeles riots set a trend toward increased crime, anger and police brutality, to the point that by 1999 America is practically a war zone.
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* [[Deus Ex Machina]]: The riot started when Mace gets beaten on by a SWAT team dissipates almost immediately just because the Police Commissioner tells everyone to calm down. To be fair, he ''does'' have a large SWAT team and National Guard unit backing him up when he does this.
* [[Dirty Cop]]: Steckler and Engelman.
* [[Disney Villain Death]]: {{spoiler|Max
* [[Does This Remind You of Anything?]]: Lenny comes off as a cross between a drug-dealer and a pimp at the start of the movie. You'd never think that he was an ex-cop (ex-vice, for that matter).
* [[Evil Versus Evil]]: {{spoiler|Crooked cops Steckler and Engelman vs. sleazy music producer Philo Gant. They both want Iris's SQUID recording for their own different reasons. And, of course, Max is playing the whole situation to his own advantage}}.
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* [[Femme Fatale]]: Faith.
* [[Forced to Watch]]: Iris' killer uses a SQUID recorder with a signal splitter to force her to see and experience her own rape and murder from his perspective.
* [[Friends All Along]]: Max's introduction plays out this way. {{spoiler|It doesn't last, though
* [[Gambit Pileup]]: At one point, it looks like everyone except Lenny, Mace and Max are running some kind of complicated scheme, which are all crashing together to cause chaos. {{spoiler|Turns out that most of them aren't, but Max is running his own [[Evil Plan]]
* [[Giving Them the Strip]]: Lenny cuts his necktie to avoid being pulled off the balcony along with {{spoiler|Max}}.
* [[Hand of Death]]: Seen during the murderer's POV tapes. His identity is spoiled by his sleeves rather early for astute watchers.
* [[Hoist by His Own Petard]]: {{spoiler|Lenny manages to kill Max using the switchblade Max sticks in his back
* [[I Can't Believe It's Not Heroin!]]: "Jacking in" is analogous to drug use, and unlike most examples of this trope, it ''is'' illegal.
* [[Informed Ability]]: Jeriko is supposed to be the best rapper around, but the one song we hear from him is (arguably) laughably bad.
* [[Inside a Computer System]]: An interesting twist on this trope, the SQUID puts the user in someone else's memories.
* [[I Want My Beloved to Be Happy]]: Played with
* [[Jerk with a Heart of Gold]]: Lenny.
* [[Killer Cop]]: Again, Steckler and Engelman.
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* [[Let's Get Dangerous]]: Lenny spends most of the movie as an ineffectual, much-disdained [[Butt Monkey]] punching bag. Then, towards the end, he seems to remember he used to be a cop and decides to reminds everyone else of this:
** Firstly, when approaching one of the [[Mooks]] who'd previously used him as a punching bag, he delivers his usual smarmy "Can't we talk about this like two reasonable human beings?" [[Catch Phrase]] -- and [[Combat Pragmatist|not even giving the guy a chance to respond]] [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|before punching him out, handcuffing him and taking his pistol.]]
** Secondly, when fighting {{spoiler|Max}}, he not only holds his own against a complete psychopath, but manages to win out {{spoiler|by ''pulling a knife that had been stabbed into his own back'' out and cutting his tie -- which was the only thing keeping Max from plummeting to his death. Also, we see him worrying before about his tie when he was going to a probable trap. It turns out to save his life
** Additionally, in a cut-scene, he is seen as being able to manipulate his way into gaining exclusive passes to the giant [[End Boss]] party in under 5 minutes, ''smiling the whole time''.
* [[Little Black Dress]]: After spending the entire movie in suits and high-collared shirts and looking badass, we see Mace in a tiny, strappy black mini-dress. [[She Cleans Up Nicely|The effect is remarkable.]] It's even hotter that she comes strapped, too.
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* [[Names to Run Away From Really Fast]]: Let's face it; would you mess with a woman called "Mace"?
* [[Never Bring a Knife to a Gun Fight]]: While trying to get into a party, Mace beats up on Gant's thugs before finally pulling a gun on the knife-wielding female thug. She shrugs and says, "Enjoy the party!"
* [[Nietzsche Wannabe]]: Max is constantly coming out with rather pessimistic pre-millennial statements of this nature. {{spoiler|[[Foreshadowing|It's a pretty big clue]] [[Face Heel Turn|pointing towards his true nature]]
* [[Not on the List]] When Lenny Nero tries to get in to the Retinal Fetish.
* [[Not with the Safety On, You Won't]]: Mace pulls this on the bald thug. It distracts him long enough to get punched.
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* [[OOC Is Serious Business]]: Lenny spends most of the film wearing loud, obnoxious suits. For the climax, he changes to a relatively conservative black pinstripe suit with grey tie to fit in.
* [[Pet the Dog]]:
** Lenny isn't a ''bad'' guy, but he is presented as a pretty scummy, sleazy loser for a good part of the movie, until we finally learn why Mace is so devoted to him against all odds. {{spoiler|He was the cop who comforted, took care of her son after his father murdered a man while he was in the house. Apparently even going so far as to sheltered him in another room so he wouldn't see his father being dragged off in handcuffs. Considering that Lenny is a white cop, Mace and her family are working-class blacks and racial tensions are that high in LA...Yeah, it's a big deal
** Lenny's gift for his amputee techie friend (a SQUID recording of running along a beach) also counts, though it also goes toward showing how people can develop an unhealthy fixation on SQUIDing what they can never have.
*** Audience reaction on this moment appears to be mixed, with half seeing the act as cruel and the other half believing it's [[Pet the Dog]].
* [[POV Cam]]: All of the SQUID scenes.
** As noted in the film commentary, Strange Days pioneered new, up-close [[POV Cam]] techniques for using headcams.
* [[Properly Paranoid]]: Max, when revealing the existence of the LAPD death squad: "It's not a question of being paranoid, it's whether you're paranoid ''enough''." {{spoiler|Subverted: Max turns out to have made the whole thing up on the spot to cover up his own part in the [[Gambit Pileup]] that seems to be crashing all around them
{{quote|'''Philo''': Paranoia's just reality on a finer scale.}}
* [[Punch Clock Villain]]: Philo's bodyguard Wade. He's genuinely flattered when Lenny recognizes him as a former football player. Still beats the stuffing out of him, though.
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* [[Sampling]]: Mace's quote, "Right here, right now!" would later be sampled in [[Fatboy Slim]]'s song also called "Right Here, Right Now".
* [[Sex by Proxy]]: The SQUID allows you to share the recorded experience of another person, leading to the obvious conclusion that it can be used to record sex. Lenny deals in a lot of smut as well as some other related merchandise, such as a teenage girl taking a shower.
** Part of his sales pitch involves asking a potential customer pointing out another of the bar's patrons with a sexy girlfriend and asking how would he like to be that guy for 20 minutes... "The ''right'' 20 minutes".
* [[Shout-Out]]:
** We have seen [[Blade Runner|another blonde Iris]] in another [[Cyberpunk]] movie before.
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** Also another track on the soundtrack is a cover of [[The Doors]] song "Strange Days".
* [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]]: More like five minutes into the future. The film takes place less than five years after its release date, yet the world has become a surprisingly futuristic and dystopic place, with [[Crapsack World|burning cars on every corner, assault rifle-toting convenience store owners, and constant patrols of riot police and National Guard troops in armored vehicles.]]
* [[Vasquez Always Dies]]: Averted; {{spoiler|both Mace and Faith survive
* [[Villainous Breakdown]]: {{spoiler|After being exposed as Jeriko One's murderer, being arrested and seeing his partner blow his own brains out rather than be arrested while they were handcuffed together, Officer Steckler is '' not'' happy with Mace
** Steckler and Engelman's [[Ho Yay]] did not hurt matters.
* [[What Do You Mean Its Not Symbolic]]: {{spoiler|Max stabs Lenny in the back both figuratively and literally, and to defeat him, Lenny must cut the tie that connects them. Also, note the quip Max makes when Lenny discovers his color-blindness
* [[What Happened to the Mouse?]]: Lenny assures Mace that getting into an exclusive New Year's party is "what he does
* [[Woman in Black]]: Mace is a black woman who wears black while on the job.
* [[Woman in White]]: Gant's [[Dark Action Girl]] has bleached white hair, pale skin, and a pale wardrobe.
* [[World Half Empty]]: Summed up by the radio talk show at the beginning of the film, describing how everything had gone to hell in the last few years.
* [[Xanatos Speed Chess]]: {{spoiler|Max's story about the LAPD death squad turns out to be one of these
* [[Zeerust]]: Leaving aside the fact that SQUID hasn't made an appearance yet, some of the film's fashions look pretty absurd, and there's also a moment with a voice-''transcribing'' answer machine that raises an eyebrow these days. Also, the kind of outspoken gangster rap that the film portrays as part of a major social movement had gone out of style by 2000. Nor was Los Angeles quite the borderline-anarchic urban war zone the movie depicts it as either.
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