This apocalyptic tale of alien abduction, telekinesis, murder and love is an entertaining and fantastic journey. Dark City's writer-director Alex Proyas (The Crow) and his screenwriting partners Lem Dobbs and David Goyer have created a dark, comic book movie complete with breakneck action, sensational special effects and an engaging story.
The setting is a neo-'40s city - stark, cynical and without sun. John Murdoch's story starts when he wakes in a bathtub in a strange hotel room. There's a broken syringe and a mutilated corpse, then a phone call warning him that the ghoulish Strangers are coming for him. Our amnesic hero, played with impeccable coolness by Rufus Sewell, takes flight. He learns he has a beautiful wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly), grew up in a place that may or may not exist, and wields mysterious powers.
With a secret agenda, names like Mr. Hand and Mr. Book and mind-over-matter powers, the villains, like the story, are wickedly unique. They float through the dark city, dissolving walls and wielding knives. Detective Bumstead (William Hurt), in an oversized fedora and hot on Murdoch's trail for murder, is a deliberate takeoff of conventional detective capers. Keifer Sutherland eerily wheezes and hobbles through steam baths as Dr. Daniel Poe Schreber, the only human who knows what's really happening.
This is sci-fi film noir with a twist of black humour. Proyas' Dark City combines a grim urban setting with fresh, action-packed special effects. The city is imprinted with an ever-changing, strange reality where buildings morph and nothing is as it seems. It takes existentialism one step past where The Crow and Ridley Scott's Bladerunner left off, where time stops and another unfathomable, visionary universe exists... or does it?
This remarkable film should be enjoyable for all movie fans, not just the targeted audience of male, goth teenagers.
