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The other night I was watching television and an old movie came on, Strange Days. It has an exciting POV/traveling-shot opening with three men holding up a Chinese restaurant and then being chased by the police. The premise here is that, in a fictional L.A. that seems to be in a permanent riot, regular video is so passé that people now have these devices they put on their heads referred to as "squids" and the video, recording and playing, taps into the visual cortex as well as other parts of the brain having to do with sound and emotional receptors.
So, I'm watching, becoming more engrossed in the plot... and then... a VERY interesting scene pops up. (POV) A man breaks into a hotel room, enters, puts on a ski mask (we see his image in the mirror for a moment), exits onto the balcony and climbs over into the next room. He chases after an attractive brunette (wearing panties and a tee-shirt), subdues her with a couple of jolts from a stun gun, drags her into the bathroom and handcuffs her to a towel bar and puts a blindfold on her. Next, he pulls out a "squid" device and puts it on her and hooks it up so that she can now feel, see, and hear the situation from his perspective as he is accosting her.
Ok, this is where it gets good... next, he takes out a box cutter and waves it in front of her face, she can see this from his perspective because of the "squid", and becomes noticeably more distressed. The man cuts off her panties and then her shirt exposing a very pair of very nice breasts. He pulls down his pants and rapes her. As if that's not enough, while he's raping her he strangles her to death with the remnants of the cut-up tee-shirt around her neck. The victim is scared, the whole scene is shot in POV, there's nudity, the premise is wonderfully sick, and both actors give a great performance in this scene.
Later on in the movie we see Juliette Lewis in a similar situation, blindfolded and handcuffed to a bed, without nudity (presumably because we saw her topless in another scene previous to this). But, this scene ends quickly and... let down, it was consensual. But still hot at the beginning before you know it's consensual.
Thank goodness that the television censors had the night off. Really. I give this movie a B+. That one scene alone is worth sitting through the whole movie. I would give it an A, but the plot is convoluted, the ending is confusing and the script seems to fall apart. James Cameron wrote the script, so... whatever, he's not my favorite. I rarely have one of those moments where I'm watching the least awful movie on cable and some GIMP content appears in the midst of my screen. A nice surprise. If I forgot anything, please feel free to chastise me.
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