DARK CITY ** (out of four) -by Bill Chambers - wchamber@netcom.ca (For more purple prose check out FILM FREAK CENTRAL http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7504 I now include a section where YOU the surfer can recommend movies to ME and other netheads. Have a freakin' good time.)
starring Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly written by Lem Dobbs, David S. Goyer and Alex Proyas directed by Alex Proyas
This review is more like an open letter to Alex Proyas, and thus contains plot spoilers, which I urge you to indulge in if you haven't yet seen this film, so you may donate your admission to a more charitable cause.
It has to be said right away. Dark City is a deeply ironic film for the following reason: this is a movie about the search for the human soul, and yet it is entertainment entirely devoid of feeling. The Crow's Proyas is so fussy about the look of his film that not even three writers could save it from becoming an expensive- looking CD-ROM adventure, replete with B-grade actors (Hurt excepted) and an unsatisfactory conclusion.
Sewell stars as John, a man who wakes up one evening in a hotel bathtub with a dead prostitute just outside the door. He can't remember anything, and the Peter Lorre- impersonating doctor (Sutherland) who phones him tells him only to flee the building, for "The Strangers" are after him. In long, black trenchcoats and wide-brimmed hats, The Strangers, a dying alien race in search of the secrets of the human soul (they believe it may be the key to a prolonged existence), pursue John through the streets of the dark metropolis. It seems he poses a threat, for he can "tune"; like The Strangers, John can stare at an object and have it morph into something else, which poses a serious threat to them, though I must admit even after 11 days of considering the story, I'm not sure why this is. The gorgeous Connelly is stuck in a thankless role as a sultry jazz club singer for that dash of retro, and Hurt is the detective on the non-case.
Proyas refuses to tackle certain issues. For instance, Connelly sings melancholy tunes nightly, and Hurt plays his accordian by the light of the street every evening after work. Instead of exploring the unifying power of music as perhaps a key to the human soul, once the plot kicks in Connelly and Hurt ditch their pastimes and we realize it was all just filler, pretty moments in a movie made up entirely of either neat or pretty moments that don't gel as a cohesive whole. And, like the recent The Fifth Element, the screenwriters take great pains here to establish their own logic that they then adhere to only when stuck in a corner. Why is it John "tunes" a door onto a cement wall to escape his enemies early on, but later in the film, when he discovers one of the plot's big revelations may lie behind a gigantic brick wall, he picks up a sledgehammer and starts smashing it apart? (Also, would he really have the energy to do so, since he's been up for days?) The Strangers have this identical "tuning" power, and yet some of them seem to forget about it at inappropriate times, and die as a result.
Perhaps the silliest plot point has Sutherland fleeing to a giant pool whenever he wants to hide from The Strangers, for they are afraid of "moisture". Is this development dwelled upon at all after it is introduced? No. Not even when it could have made for a hell of a sequence: at one point, Sutherland, Hurt and Sewell find themselves in a canoe, boating upstream to a mysterious beach. The Strangers could have surrounded the boat, but they wouldn't have been able to attack John and company for their collective fear of the river. Likewise, John and company would not have been able to attack them, because they would have had to exit the boat to do so. This could have been a very tense moment, one I anticipated since they mapped it out for themselves, and yet, what happens? John and company exit the boat and proceed to destroy said wall. There are very few payoffs in this screenplay.
For all its flaws, Dark City is a triumph of production design, and the CGI effects are impressive. Proyas also resists the urge to gum up the sound track with alternative tunes, dashing any studio hopes of a hit tie-in album. And I must cop to being intrigued for the first half of the film. Hurt is just fine in his role, and Sutherland has his moments, but, for the most part, the acting is weak across the board. Sewell is uncharismatic and we never get any real sense of jeopardy from his noteless performance. Throughout Dark City, I couldn't help but imagine one poor, lost Stranger, sitting in a darkened cinema, tuning Proyas's film into something stronger.
-Bill Chambers; March, 1998
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