Dark City (1998)

It feels like there was too much edited out of this movie, that doesn't mean that I didn't like it, well told story, should have been longer, nice acting, music, dialogue, well directed.

Set in a bleak dystopian world, Dark City, directed by Alex Poryas of 'The Crow', is a mind-bending science-fiction vehicle that aims to challenge audiences at a psychological level while pushing the boundaries of cerebral ideas. It is a film aiming to grip moviegoers with an arresting visual style while capitalizing on a chock full of concepts that feel fresh. Tautly paced and piercing with a complex narrative, Dark City never holds back when splashing viewers with cutting-edge of surprises and unpredictable twists. The central figure of this compelling tale is an amnesiac man fighting for the truth in a world where nothing is what he appears and reality is distorted to alarming proportions. And it is the mind-bending plot that is the driving force of this twisted tale. Alex Poryas handles the story immense precision without resorting to overly familiar elements. It is more than safe to say that his effort prevail. In deeper words, his efforts amount to something that feels groundbreaking. This film is set in a world where the sun never rises and the cities are blanketed with everlasting nightfall. John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with no memory of his past or Emma (played by Jennifer Connolly), a woman who claims to be his wife. When Murdoch is alerted by Dr. Daniel Schreiber (played by Kiefer Sutherland) of Detective Frank Bumstead (played by William Hurt) who is hunting down for a series of grisly murders he has no memory of committing. Murdoch must evade Bumstead and uncover the truth of his past while running evading a league of alien-like humans known as The Strangers who each have dubious tricks under their sleeves.Is this guy a murderer? Is he innocent? Is there a corrupt side of the law enforcement officer? Each questions lies in the heat battle between the lead character and the enigmatic truth that hidden by an enemy beyond his imagination. Director Alex Poryas drives the story with a plot where the some of the most shocking surprises are not what we know but what we don't know. One thing that Poryas accomplishes here is keeping things unpredictable from beginning to end. In the process, the film holds no barrs when challenging viewers' expectations and placing the characters in a ramshackle of shocking twists and grim conspiracies. While Poryas leaves room for a few action set pieces, he keeps it suppressed for the most of the second half before delivering a visually stunning climatic battle during the final twenty minutes. As for the visual department, Poryas proves himself highly a dazzling production design of a dystopian society plunged into darkness, owing elements to Terry Gilliam's 'Brazil' with a slice of 'Blade Runner'. Rufus Sewell's John Murdoch makes for an appealing protagonist, the character that manages to stand out considerably among the supporting cast of underdeveloped characters. Although Sewell's performance occasionally fluctuates between strong and clunky, he mostly gets the job done. Jennifer Connolly plays Emma with great humility and fortitude, and his romance with John is fine, but never quite sizzles. William Hurt embraces his character with humanity without straying into the portrayal of over-the-topness. But he is certainly not a villain that hits a home-run. Kiefer Sutherland gets his time to shine, but the lack of depth in this character limit his ability to fully blossom his talent in the role. It appears that John Murdoch is the only firmly developed character in the pack which makes him unsurprisingly easy to root for. Dark City is a thoroughly mind-bending science-fiction trek, shining with chord-striking visual compulsion and a story that is enormously engaging, if slightly flawed in its roots. The movie will more than likely not appeal to individuals alienated by a dark atmosphere, hence the title, or intellectually challenging narrative. But for others, it is a chord-striking experience and a sucker punch achievement in its genre.

I made the mistake in watching this movie because of the high rating, which is a mistake I may never make again. As the movie began I thought that the writing was supposed to be ironic, like it was being overly cliché on purpose as a joke, but then as the movie continued I slowly began to realize how uncreative the characters and dialogue were. Were there any jokes at all in this film? because the only thing you caught me laughing about was how predictable and banal the story line was.The characters were also bland, which could have been somewhat excusable considering the theme of erasing people's memories and personality, but this never even happened to any of our main characters. The main characters were completely immune to the main plot of the film and were still inexcusably shallow. The main character, the human with the same powers as the aliens, is supposed to be a human who is apparently "more evolved" and thus closer to the alien species, and this is how he has powers. It really makes no sense in general, but it also raises a lot of questions like why nobody seemed to notice his abilities until he was an adult who got abducted by aliens and lived multiple lives until finally he notices that he has incredible power during another one of many memory implant procedures.The obvious bad guys were both uncreative, self-contradictory and unrealistic. The "aliens" were, a bunch of screeching, cold-hearted (and yet still irrational), pale- skin, long-black-coat-wearing humans. They have powerful telekinetic abilities, but this didn't stop them from behaving like your typical slow-chasing, inefficient, knife-wielding villain. For a supposedly collective species, they sure were awful at working together and coordinating with each other. For an incredibly technologically advanced species, they sure were primitive in their philosophy and even naive in their science. For an alien species, they sure were anthropomorphic, both physically and behaviorally. For experimenters, they sure were willing to ruin their experiments and to be needlessly cruel to their valuable test subjects. There seemed to be no real method to their madness either. It was as if they expected that replacing people's memories every midnight would somehow one day give them a great insight but they had nothing that resembled a scientific method. Why this would be the way that the aliens chose to study humans is beyond me. Also beyond me is why they would go to such great costly lengths for such small returns.To top it all off, the entire story makes absolutely no sense; The very concept that the movie attempts to get at is completely contradicted by the ending of the movie. The idea is supposed to be that humans have "souls", that we are more than just our memories. John tells an alien that "what makes us human" won't be found in the brain and that the person whose memories he was implanted with "was never him". What does John then proceed to do with his power? He acts out the wishes of the person whose memories he was implanted with. What made him who he was, in the end, was nothing more than those memories. When he is free to do anything, to be "himself", he still reenacts the implanted memories by creating the beach and by meeting his fake wife. His wife and everyone else are then implied to behave exactly as how they were supposed to, rather than how they would "freely" want to act according to their "soul". The movie is an absolute mess that got nothing right.

One of my favorite fantasy movies. I get sucked into its dark atmosphere and it makes me feel I've been there since forever. Mystery, thriller, action, romance... just a trace of everything mixed up in perfect nightmare.............................