Set in Los Angeles two days before the turn of the millennium, Strange Days is a science fiction thriller about, well, a lot of things murder, addiction, bad cops, bad criminals, good criminals and mean, rich people, to name a few. Everybody hates each other, which kind of makes sense because there are lots of people and they all either seem to be trying to kill or maim somebody or trying to get away from somebody trying to kill or maim them. And somehow, almost everybody agrees that when the calendar turns over to the year 2000, all of this will change.

At the core of it all are Lenny (Ralph Fiennes) and Mace (Angela Bassett), two people we are supposed to like because they tell each other they are good people. Lenny is trying to help a very unlikable rock singer named Faith (Juliette Lewis), and Mace is trying to help the very unlikable Lenny forget about Faith.

These characters and several others (also unlikable; people are pretty mean in the future), are trying to solve the murder of a rap star named Jeriko One. Two cops pulled Jeriko and three friends over without explanation (Jeriko is African-American), and when Jeriko told them he would sue, the cops shot him and his friends. One girl escaped, and through technology developed near the end of the decade, she recorded her brainwaves onto a compact disc as evidence against the police. But once Lenny and Mace have the disc, they are afraid to go public with it for fear of rioting, civil unrest and increased racial tension.

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Strange Days tries very hard to be several things it can never be. It tries to be a psychological thriller, but after an hour and a half of waiting for a solution to the mystery it presents, the wrap-up explanation is both absurd and emotionally uncompelling. It tries to present an apocalyptic social commentary on drug abuse, racism and poverty in America, but addresses these issues with gross over-simplification of both the problems and the people involved. Somehow, although most viewers may not pick up on this until the film’s final scenes, Strange Days also tries to be a romance, and fails miserably here, too.

Director Kathryn Bigelow, whose credits include Blue Steel and Point Break, is described in her press packet as a former painter. She has a talent for visual impact, and her images of L.A. in 1999 are disturbing and frightening at first. Unfortunately, Bigelow can’t seem to direct actors, just set designers and cameramen. Subtle character interpretations are apparently not allowed. Lines of dialogue, facial expressions and emotions are thrown like fastballs at the audience, and after the first scenes this approach quickly becomes predictable and ineffective.

The supporting cast is guilty of some of the worst cases of overacting in recent history. At times during the film, especially when the bumbling evil cops are chasing female victims, the action is reminiscent of the silent films of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin. But here we not only see the overstated gestures and expressions of anger and fear, we hear them, too. Rather than impacting the audience with the intensity of emotion they are trying to convey, the actors’ hysterics merely make the characters look absurd, destroying the intended effect.

Rationality is a thing of the past in the grim near-future of Strange Days. Nothing anyone does makes any sense, there is no cause and effect, everything just happens usually in the most sensational way possible. In an action-adventure flick like The Terminator or a horror film like Aliens, this kind of superficial storytelling works because the purpose of the plot is to propel the film from one special effects-laden thrill to another. Scripted by James Cameron, who wrote both the above films, Strange Days is hurt by the very style that made such action and horror films a commercial success.

In a psychological thriller, a social critique, or even to a lesser degree a romance, there must be some level of logic and believability to the events unfolding on-screen for the film to be effective. It is because of the complete lack of depth in the plot, characters, events and social commentary in Strange Days that, despite its highly developed visual imagery, I give it two out of ten possible stars.