Subject: Review: Dark City (1998)

From: [email-masked] (Bill Chambers)
Date: 13 Mar 1998 05:26:55 GMT

DARK CITY ** (out of four)
-by Bill Chambers - [email-masked]
(For more purple prose check out
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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