[tritosomal]

It was cheesey. The focus of the conspiracy was the political assassination of a musician, except whenever movies try to fictionalize a wildly popular artist, it usually deflates the premise because you're forced into imagining why the artist is so popular.

The music is contrived and laughably bad, so while you might really want to imagine the profound tragedy of losing the artist while being a fan of the music, your just left with blah.

Hackers and Johnny Pnemonic (ostensibly from the same essential genre or style and period) are more fun to watch, simply because those movies don't frame the story arc as supposedly shocking and worrisome, even though they suck probably just as much.

With Strange Days, your supposed to care about something for some odd reason.

[coldtea]

>The music is contrived and laughably bad

That never stopped chart-topping artists...

[samplatt]

Seriously.

I actually thought the 'rapper' had some decent-power beat poetry going on, and measured up favourably against real-world artists (talk about backhanded compliments...)

[tritosomal]

Put it this way, the music is patently artificial, if it exists solely within the scope of the fiction.

If the producers were not willing to cast a known artist, and granting creative freedom to compose real music, which would then be included on the official motion picture sound track, it's assuredly contrived, although it might be appealing.

Further driving this fact home is that, the actor cast in the role did not further his career as a musician, and no one claims credit for composing authentic music. This is a telling clue that it was composed expressly as a believable, high-quality prop. The people who made it were paid specifically to craft the music to fill the space required for the plot of the movie.

Now, take authentic music from other movies, which has been composed by a career musician, which then gets used as part of a sound track years later. It comes through, as obviously good, because it's selected for its high quality, as a known quantity.

Similarly, observe career musicians that have played roles in movies. Even if their acting sucks, usually their musical contributions still shine.

When examined in this way, the cheesey nature of the prop music is evident. This sort of perception is tough to balance, when asking people to suspend disbelief for the duration of the movie. It's hard to pull someone into the world of a movie, and then ask them to be impressed by someone who is not famous, and show them a world that is moved by his music when the music isn't truly moving.

Beyond that, we weren't even permitted to become emotionally invested in the character. Even though the circumstances of his demise are villified, there's no depth to his martyrdom because we don't bond with the character. We bond with the underground experience brokering brain-hacker main character. This is where the movie falls short, with respect to the weak cover-up conspiracy theory.