SF a step above starships, lasers, and BEMs
Alex Proyas, the director of Dark City, has fashioned a truly unique vision. The only film I can compare it to is the now-classic Blade Runner. That is high praise indeed.
Dark City is the story of a nameless city where the Sun never rises. Its citizens go about their pointless lives as they are being observed by aliens known as the Strangers. They wish to know more about humans, so they have this cage-city for just that purpose. The Strangers steal people's memories. If they so desire, they insert those memories into other individuals to guage their reactions to their changed environment.
At the stroke of midnight, the Strangers lift the memories when everyone simultaneously falls asleep. Rufus Sewell does not quite do so and circumstances make him out to be a serial murderer. Jennifer Connelly, the babe-o-riffic actress from The Rocketeer is his estranged wife. William Hurt is the detective trying to get to the bottom of the murders and the shifting memories. Kiefer Sutherland is the Mengele-like quisling who works for the Strangers.
The Strangers have the power to "queme"--to make their will become reality. Sewell seems to have them at their own game and the chase is on.
No movie can be 100% newly created. The Strangers look like Christopher Lloyd as Judge Doom from Who Framed Roger Rabbit? as they move about the city in their black leather trenchcoats. When they are at their home base, the Strangers favor the Hellraiser Cenobite look. The movie's denouement reminded me of an Old Trek episode with Kirk in a clash of wills with some god-like alien, but these are small quibbles.
Dark City has a wonderful retro-40s look. The men wear their snap-brim hats and the women are in dresses of that era. The streets and buildings are lifted straight from any flim noir flick you can name. Meanwhile, the Strangers' home base is truly one of the damnedest sets that I've seen in the movies for quite some time. If Dark City does not receive Academy Awards nominations for at least Art Direction and Set Design, then it is being robbed.
Siskel (or was it Ebert?) remarked during their review that Proyas should direct the next Batman movie. (Assuming there is another Batflick.) I couldn't agree more. First with The Crow and now Dark City, Proyas has shown himself to be a director of true vision and deserves more projects befitting his immense talent.
In the meantime, see and enjoy Dark City. It's what movies are meant to be--an experience set in a whole another world.
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