Directed by Alex Proyas
Starring Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly, Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson and William Hurt
I will admit to cheating somewhat with this review. This was actually my THIRD attempt at watching this film. It's not like I disliked the flick and gave up on it - far from it. The first time was during my college years, when I sat down to begin watching it and got called away to go to work. For whatever reason, I just never came back to it. Flash forward several years, when I was staying over at a friend's house with the movie on in the background. I was insanely tired and slept through the entire thing, waking up only to see the movie's finale. So the film's middle 100 minutes were a complete mystery to me until now.
Dark City is one of the most famous cult movies of all time, a film that garnered a great deal of buzz among my circle of middle school friends when it was released in early 1998 and was promptly in and out of theaters, barely covering its budget at the box office. It topped Roger Ebert's list of his best films of 1998, and is one of the movies that was probably saved from obscurity due to interference from the eponymous critic. Such high-profile praise resulted in people slowly picking up on it and the film gradually gaining the following that it enjoys today. It is the brainchild of writer-director Alex Proyas, the man behind the similarly dark-themed The Crow and I, Robot. I don't consider Dark City to be a near-perfect film, but it is highly enjoyable, he kind of movie that sticks with you long after the ending credits have rolled. How so? Well, allow the Strangers to put you under so I can tell you.
At its core, the movie is a neo-noir film that features that most cherished of all neo-noir mystery tropes - an unnamed protagonist waking up with no memory of who he is. Our lead character is John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell). He's in a bathtub, disheveled, and completely unaware of his prior life and what brought him to this particular squalid apartment. He also discovers a murdered woman in the room and a nearby blade that was no doubt used to do the deed before running off into the night. It's a trope for a reason, because it generally works. Discovering who someone is - especially your main character - is a tried-and-true way of getting the audience invested into the action.
Fortunately, it's not just a trope in Dark City. Memory is the key theme of the film, and all of the craziness that ensues is connected to it somehow. Murdoch is being trailed by the Strangers, flying super-beings with telekinetic powers who seem to be controlling everything that goes on in the city. The lead stranger is played by Richard O'Brien, Riff Raff himself from Rocky Horror, and he is a splendid and memorable lead villain. As John goes on the run and getting to know the other people inhabiting this world, he gleams that no one in town can really remember their past with any detail. It isn't exactly a leap of faith to figure that the bald black-cloaked bad guys are somehow involved.
While Murdoch makes for an engaging lead, the movie shines with its side characters. First and foremost among these is Dr. Daniel Schreber, played by Kiefer Sutherland in what I consider to be his best onscreen performance. Yes, better than Jack Bauer, and I know from experience because I watched the first seven seasons of 24 religiously (I refuse to watch the last, because I'm 100% certain that I will hate how it ends). He's very reminiscent of Peter Lorre in his mannerisms, speaking in stilted patterns and skulking around like R.N. Renfield as he assists the Strangers while also granting occasional hints to Murdoch about who and where he is. William Hurt is also great as a police inspector tracking a serial killer who has bumped off several of the city's prostitutes, and believes Murdoch may be the man responsible. Murdoch's would-be wife Emma is also an interesting character, although I found Jennifer Connelly's performance to be a little underwhelming. Come to think of it, I'm ALWAYS underwhelmed by Connelly. While she is strikingly beautiful, she always seems bored and almost annoyed to be acting in movies. Is it just me? Probably.
Caution: spoilers ahead. As the movie progresses, bits and pieces of the mystery are revealed to the audience. The Strangers are actually extraterrestrial beings who use the bodies of dead humans as their vessels, and the entire city is in fact an experiment to find the individuality of the human spirit. The sun never comes up in the city, and this is by design. Every night at midnight, the inhabitants' memories are erased and swapped, with the buildings being altered according to the Strangers' whims as they search for humanity's core. Murdoch is the Neo of the film, a guy who has acquired the power to be able to resist the changes and must utilize his talents to stop them. Did The Matrix rip this movie off? Probably.
The premise demands that almost the entire running time of Dark City takes place at night. This is a motif that can either work really well to serve a film's atmosphere (Escape from New York) or be a major hindrance (Highlander II). This movie is an example of the former. Proyas is a really skilled director, a savant when it comes to the visual style that was looking for with the film, and he creates a world that rivals Tim Burton's Gotham City in terms of sheer atmosphere. It's a world of shadows and steam that seems to be retrograded to a modernized version of the 1930s, and it is a character in and of itself. It is broken up only occasionally by some brief bits of bad CGI. The climax of the film is an epic fight high above the city that should have been thrilling but made my eyes glaze over because what I was watching looked far too much like a modern Marvel film. Had this scene been done with practical effects, it would have undoubtedly carried more punch.
Everyone in this movie gave it their all, but I walked away from Dark City thinking that this was undoubtedly Sutherland's movie. Sewell is also interesting as a hero with no actual heroic qualities, as everything that he thinks he remembers could all just be imprinted into his brain. This guy clearly had the goods to be a much bigger star than he turned out to be. I can only surmise that it was his name that held him back - Rufus. It's just a not a cool name, and this is coming from a guy whose last name is Lickness. If this dude changed his first name to Michael, I'd be willing to bet that he'd own his own solid gold island by now. Really, though, the characters of the film are secondary to the premise that it throws at you and the world that it creates - but NOT in the way that it overwhelms you with a bunch of senseless gobbledygook. It knows when to slow down and simplify. This is the film that Christopher Nolan's films all attempt to be but fail at.
Rating time: *** 1/2 out of ****. It's occasionally illogical and clunky, but you don't watch a movie like this for biting realism. This flick has inspiration, creativity, and villains that are almost as creepy as this guy:
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