Directed by Alex Proyas
Story by Alex Proyas
Written by Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs, and David S. Goyer
Staring Rufus Sewell, Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland, William Hurt, Ian Richardson, and Richard O'Brien.
As Reviewed by James Brundage
This is the fifth time I have watched Dark City. Four times I have watched it on video rentals, the fifth time I watched it on a DVD, the format that I've been hearing good things about for several months now. I paid $24.99 to buy the DVD, about $10-$15 more than I would have spent on a videocassette. As far as format goes, it was worth it. From frame one, picture is deeper and sound is clearer. Well, enough about telling the world about the Dark City DVD - a vast enhancement over the VHS version - let's talk about the movie Dark City.
Dark City is about, well, a dark city. It is dark on the psychological level: the world presented in front of you is one of prostitutes, serial killers, and things that go bump in the night. It is also dark on the physical level: no one can remember clearly the last time they saw the light of day. As far as the darkness of the film itself: it is a devastatingly beautiful film noir, filled with all the jazz and mystery that we have come to expect from the incredibly interesting style of filmmaking.
Alex Proyas' first cinematic effort since the tragic death of Brandon Lee on the set of The Crow, this presents us with a radically different world than the shoot-em-up that The Crow was. In Dark City, we follow John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), a man with scant memories and the ability to Tune, or alter physical reality with his mind. Murdoch awakes at midnight in a city where time seems to stop for several hours. He is in a hotel room with a bloody knife and the dead body of a prostitute. On his trial are a race of beings called "The Strangers", who also posses this telekinetic ability. The Strangers are a dying race that controls Dark City, replacing people’s memories in order to discern what makes a person human. They are, in their own way, searching for the soul.
Murdoch does soul-searching of his own, trying to find who he was, or was supposed to be. Desperately trying to evade the psychotic and utterly terrifying Strangers. Dr. Daniel Poe Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) is trying to aid him, trying to help him understand an ability that he can hardly fathom, while at the same time being forced by the Strangers to help them in their zoo of humanity. Emma Murdoch (Jennifer Connelly), his wife, is a jazz singer utterly convinced that her husband is innocent. Inspector Bumstead (William Hurt) is the cop trying to make sense of a crime that leads to a conspiracy more complex than the JFK assassination.
Dark City is propelled forward at the speed of a Tokyo bullet train thanks to one of the most original plots and screenplays in ages, the first in a pattern of cross-genre works (this one sci-fi, Mystery, and Film Noir) that had among its newest members the excellent action film The Matrix. The ferocious pace displayed in the movie grabs everyone at frame one and keeps them until the end, and kicks the suspense in with a wonderful score and a terrific jazz and techno soundtrack.
It is a foray into the surreal: let you be warned about that. However, unlike most ambiguous and surreal movies, such as Lynch's Lost Highway, it gives you answers in a way that you can understand. Not only does it give you answers in an easy to understand format, but it compels you with characters that you like, that you find unique. It is careful not to put you a step ahead or behind Murdoch as he unravels the mystery of Dark City, as he tries to escape from the bizarre and frightening world that constantly surrounds him.
See it, sci-fi fans. See it, those who liked The Crow. See it, friends of mystery and of film noir. Hell, if your just someone tired of the same-old, same-old that Hollywood dishes out, see it. But, any way you cut it, see this movie.