Sleazy grifter Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes) makes a living selling illegal "clips", recorded experiences where you fully experience events as somebody else which are consumed in a manner similar to recreational drugs. Many of these are pornographic or involve extreme violence, up to and including death. Shying away from "snuff" he mostly deals in tailored pornography but also anything he can do a deal for.
One of his associates Iris contacts him, scared and looking for help and says his ex-girlfriend Faith (Juliette Lewis) who he is still obsessed with is also in danger. Later he is passed an envelope with a clip containing Iris' brutal rape and murder from the point of view of the perpetrator.
Unwilling to go to the Police (he's a criminal disgraced former cop) Lenny enlists the help of his friends Mace (Angela Bassett) a bodyguard / chauffeur and Max (Tom Sizemore) a private investigator to work out what's going on and try to keep Faith safe.
Faith, quite sensibly, wants nothing to do with Lenny.
CW: sexual violence, rape and murder close up
Kathryn Bigelow and James Cameron's notorious grimdark 90s flop is simultaneously excellent, forward looking, unpleasant and dated.
Vicarious addiction to other people's exciting/titillating antics almost looks like TikTok videos, mobile phone porn or "Russian dashcam" footage. Several characters are literally killed by their addiction and others lives ruled by it, causing the whole series of events.
The 'protagonist' Lenny is a cowardly weasel who lurches from situation to situation and it's really Angela Basset as Mace who has it together and kicks various people's ass. An awful lot of the movie is Mace saving Lenny and trying to straighten him out.
The seed for the plot is something you could find in something current with no real edits and I'd forgotten it could slot straight into modern BLM-adjacent filmmaking.
Faith has little to do apart from be objectified titillating grunge rock pseudo-jailbait. I strongly suspect this is done knowingly because of how Lenny objectifies her through constant playback of clips of their dead relationship. There's a hint of her actual character towards the end, but by then it's wrapping up.
The real relationship is the unreciprocated one between Mace and Lenny that his addiction to clips is making impossible as he's not the man he once was.
The club scenes and huge crowds for the end of days party show their age but for such things have an air of 90s reality that most movies didn't manage.
Very shocking at the time, the specific sexually violent 'clip' at the core of the story is still just as grim, but I think justifies its existence.
This was smart modern noir with sci-fi trappings maybe a bit too soon for some of what they wanted to show to a mainstream audience. If you loved it at the time I think you still will, but also be reminded of how nasty it is in places. 9/10