“Strange Days” was directed by Kathryn Bigelow and based on a script she developed with James Cameron that has all the trappings of the cyberpunk genre — crime, technology, and the city. The crime is gangland anarchy, the technology is a recording device named SQUID, and the city is Los Angeles in the final days of 1999. Navigating this is Lenny Nero (Ralph Fiennes), former LAPD officer and current black market creep.

He deals in SQUID, an illegal headset that records people’s memories, stores them on memory discs, and allows others to replay them in intense virtual reality experiences. “​​This is like a piece of someone’s life straight from the cerebral cortex,” Nero explains to one of his customers. The possibilities here are endless and endlessly disturbing because Nero’s customers don’t want the innocent stuff — they want perversion and violence. This technomoralism is part of the film’s wider commentary on racism, corruption and social stratification.

In the 1990s, “Strange Days” was a total box office bomb, recouping just under $8 million of its $42 million budget. Today, with its striking imagery, explosive set pieces, and dark cyberpunk trappings, it’s a cult film worth revisiting.