That's an amazing reaction. Especially concerning the chase through the
crowd at the end. I think it had nothing to do with Angela's color or the
color of her rescuer. It had everything to do with one person trying to do
what she thought was right and the police chief, just another person,
really, affirming that she was doing the right thing.
-Sean
At 08:36 AM 12/1/97 -0800, you wrote:
>Wow, I can hardly believe you're talking about the same Strange Days
>that I saw. I saw it as a very early preview at my university. Do you
>think the movie makers took our reviews seriously and re-edited the
>godawful thing before opening it a couple of months later? I think they
>must have because I can't believe you're talking about the same flick.
>
>I thought it was one of the worst movies I'd ever seen. I was offended
>at every turn by mindless, shallow dialogue and the heavy-handed
>attempts to stir feminist ire. I hated the ploys: see, the bad guys are
>really bad--they turn rape and torture into a fun, money-making scheme;
>see, the good guys are really good 'cuz they're weepy, they get upset
>when they see women treated badly, and they're nice to kids. The
>bad/slutty girl no decent-female-movie-goer can relate to gets treated
>(dismissed) like a bad/slutty girl; the good, maternal everywoman gets
>rewarded by good guys and almost-bad guys alike. The ending is beyond
>bad. When the big, white man came down from the skies like god to help
>the poor, frightened, brown girl (can you say white, middle-class
>guilt?) people groaned and laughed and walked out of the theater. Now
>I'll grant you that the reaction of the students may be stronger than
>that of the average theater-goer because my school has a larger than
>average proportion of African-American, Latino, and Filipino students.
>The biggest laugh of the night came at the end of the movie, after the
>ridiculously cliched chase through the crowd (with gratuitous violence
>perpetrated on innocent bystanders just to show how bad the bad guys are
>in case you were really stupid and didn't get it earlier), when the good
>folks get saved by the guy in the helicopter. A woman yelled, "Oh yeah,
>here comes da Man. I wonder how big his gun is?"
>
>I stuck around to fill out the questionnaire so I could express the
>depth of my disgust for this idiotic film. The embarrassing part is I
>was the one who forced my friends to go see it because it had a female
>director and starred a non-white woman. They only went because it was
>free. Needless to say, I'm not allowed to pick films for these friends
>anymore....
>
>I think they must have fixed the film before general release.
>
>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:07:36 PDT