BRILLIANT!

Rating: 10/10 (11 September 1998)

This movie took a very long time to hit the theaters here in Portugal, after its premiere at the Fantasporto's 1998 edition, quite some months ago. I was losing hope of seeing it on the big silver screen, but then my eyes landed on the movie's poster when I was just passing by a local theater. I held no second thoughts and hurled myself inside to buy a ticket.
The movie opens with Dr. D. P. Schreber (Kiefer Sutherland) introducing us to a powerful breed of aliens, which he refers to as "The Strangers". They possess the ability to manipulate the properties of the physical world. However, and despite such skills, they are dying. Their only hope revolves around unraveling the secrets of immortality in the ways of the human soul. In order to accomplish such studies, they built a city and populate it with the object of their experiments.
The viewer is then presented the disturbed John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell), who wakes up in a bathtub, suffering from severe amnesia. He moves to the bedroom next door and is horrified as he finds a prostitute's corpse lying on the floor. Extremely confused, Murdoch is compelled to flee after receiving a mysterious warning phone call.
As Murdoch escapes, he is confronted by a group of phantasmagoric individuals who attempt to capture him, fortunately failing to do so. After the incident, John Murdoch begins to look up his identity, learning about his name, his past and his wife Emma (Jennifer Connelly). He also discovers that he possesses the same strange abilities as "The Strangers", but is only able to use them when caught in desperate situations.
Meanwhile, police Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt) is assigned to investigate a serial murder case, John Murdoch being the prime suspect. Bumstead is convinced of Murdoch's innocence but is unable to disprove his involvement in the crimes.
These four characters embark in a story that keeps feeding the viewer with clues, but director and writer Alex Proyas masterfully rearranges them so that they make no sense or have no importance until the very end. The movie relentlessly unwinds the plot at an impressive rate and in the correct timing. And no pauses are made to explain the things that are going on. Therefore, you'll have to pay close attention to the succession of events, or you'll end up in the dark.
Speaking of darkness, this is one very bleak movie. The sets draw inspiration from the 1920-1950 period, and everything is kept in the same dark style. The city was brilliantly constructed and reminds us of motion pictures such as Tim Burton's "BATMAN" (1989) or Ridley Scott's "BLADE RUNNER" (1982), with tall gothic towers scratching a sky of endless night; and buildings rooted in the gloomy, abandoned streets down below. There are canals filled with murky water, and secret underground passages where "The Strangers" live in.
Alex Proyas' "DARK CITY" oozes style and perfection. It is an excellent science fiction film about a man's quest for his identity and the memories that define him, only to find that the true nature of humanity lies in the heart and not in the mind.