This movie didn't even manage to recoup 20% of its budget and nearly ended the career of director Kathryn Bigelow - who has since gone on to win an Oscar. Despite having James Cameron involved in both the writing and production, this film kind of came and went without anyone even noticing.
How can you have a film with a better-than-average sci-fi storyline, have a heavy-hitter like James Cameron on staff and feature incredible performances by Ralph Fiennes, Angela Bassett, Juliette Lewis, and one of my favorite not-so-appreciated stars, Tom Sizemore and still not get noticed?
There are a lot of theories out there. One was that people weren't generally interested in sci fi in the 90's and this film was considered (and is) incredibly violent. Others said that the frequent use of point of view cameras (which was necessary because of the overall plot) was considered annoying - which is something i can relate to as The Blair Witch Project's filming made me feel nauseous in the theater.
The plot starts out easy enough to understand. The year is 1999 and the world has gone down the usual route of chaos and lack of government power has made many parts of the world, especially Los Angeles (where the film is set) a kind of war zone. The latest addiction are these films that are recorded using something called a SQUID (that is placed on the users head) that is capable not just of recording audio and video, but also the sensations the person wearing it is experiencing at the time they filmed it. Obviously, some less-than-innocent "films" are the most popular ones in the underworld.
This might be another reason why this movie was shelved by many critics. Feminist groups would probably have a real problem with the fact that the most sought after SQUID films are ones involving sex and even murder and rape. I can certainly understand why people would have a problem with this but to be fair to the film-makers, this is a very small part of the movie and perhaps it was just a statement on the part of the writers about how parts of humanity are not just flawed, but also quite twisted in their desires.
The major plot of the story is that our hero, Lenny Nero (played by Fiennes) is a SQUID film dealer despite being an ex-cop (yeah, i know this cop turned underworld dealer isn't exactly new) and he discovers a police conspiracy that could get them in a lot of trouble and of course, the corrupt police of 1999 can not allow him to make this information public. What we end up with is a fast-paced movie with fantastic actors and a compelling storyline. I simply can not understand why it was not a blockbuster. Perhaps we were too puritan back in the mid 90's.