Undeservedly underrated

Rating: 7/10 (29 June 2018)

With Blade Runner and The Matrix as Hollywood's two crowning achievements in its long line of misrepresentations of the cyberpunk genre in film, it seems like Dark City has been buried into obscurity for not being like the former, at least to the mainstream audience. It shouldn't be this way; while this film certainly isn't as stylish as the other two, Dark City presents a very cool take on the usual "what's real and what isn't?" idea that's usually seen in these cyberpunk sci-fi films. Going into any major detail of the its story would be stepping into spoiler territory but by the end of the film, I really was enraptured by its direction despite its execution (in style).
A cyberpunk themed film's visuals is going to be one of its most important traits. The expected aspects are usually going to be something along the lines of holograms besides skyscrapers and neon lights enveloping the darkened city inhabited by people who were big trench-coats. Unfortunately, this isn't entirely the case in Dark City. Because of the overall story, the film will often look murky and just not pretty to look at (definitely not the best looking movie to watch during the daytime). Fight scenes are never fun to watch when it's hard to see anything that's happening; this film's darkened colors combined with the jerky camerawork during these sequences made them feel disorienting for me. At least this isn't an action movie on any major level. I was half expecting the filmmakers to make use of lights in some unique way, shape, or form to counteract the sheer darkness of the visuals but it never really happened. I'm not unhappy with this overall result though, due to the story's demands and possible budget constraints.
Another popular cyberpunk attribute that isn't prevalent in Dark City is the music. It might be too much to ask this film to use the 80's style synthwave sound but seeing how it was released in 1998 and Blade Runner, having been released much earlier, featured a great synth soundtrack, I wish the filmmakers made the music a bigger priority here.
The character performances were just okay. I only feel the need to mention the acting because I wanted a good segue to talk about how great Jennifer Connelly looks here: she looked great, maybe the budget for the lighting went towards her scenes. Kiefer Sutherland does this weird thing where he constantly breaks off his speech after every two to three words; I know this should be in reference to his character's frantic state of mind or something but it was annoying nonetheless.
On questioning reality in a film, there are definitely better ways to do it and there are also worse ways. Dark City's take on this subject is both accessible and layered enough to make it undeserving of the negligence directed towards it these past years. It's definitely underrated but the film just isn't able to capitalize well enough on its own narrative unlike Blade Runner and The Matrix. Although if Hollywood were looking to remake another classic (and God knows they definitely are), I think Dark City could be a prime subject given its concept and prior restrictions.