"I feel like I'm living out someone else's nightmare"

Rating: 7/10 (26 October 2006)

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up alone and naked in a lukewarm seedy bathtub, with blood pouring from a hole in his forehead and with no recollection of how he got there  or even who he is. The phone rings and a breathless doctor tells him he is in grave danger and that 'they' are after him. Bad events snowball into an impossible mess as John discovers the dead body of a prostitute in the other room, and soon it becomes clear that someone is trying to frame him for murder. Now he has to put all the pieces of the puzzle together...
So goes the strong, pitch-black opening to an even darker film. 'Dark City' is classic sci-fi with greenish grey hooded alien characters, special effects and a world drastically different from our own. Yet this is the mere window-dressing to an infinitely richer story of Matrix-like proportions. Indeed the two films are highly comparable in both style and substance as they both navigate darkly futuristic worlds in which the citizens are blissfully ignorant of the ongoing brainwashing by a higher power. In Dark City these are 'the strangers'  mysterious invaders who manipulate the way things are run by using telekinetic powers. This includes the debarring of sunlight, casting a perpetual shadow over Dark City.
The aforementioned naturally relegates the film to Blade Runner territory. There are clear similarities in the dark, eerie sci-fi urban feel of the city but also, in many ways, in its protagonist Rufus Sewell who is a lonely detective. Less assured than Harrison Ford due to his amnesia of course, but still of the same calibre. Director Alex Proyas both wrote and directed the film and it seems he has drawn a lot of influences from Blade Runner in the sense that he, much like Ridley Scott, filters his story through a noir blender of sorts. His city is coated in a rich film noir atmosphere and one could make a good case for Jennifer Connelly being a femme fatale here; she speaks with a low and sensual voice, she wears red lipstick, she sings mellow jazz at nightclubs.
The dark style is both aesthetically intoxicating and endlessly depressing but its characters are enjoyably layered. Rufus Sewell masters the American accent of his character with effortless conviction and it is baffling to see how well this rentable-bad-guy-who-always-loses-the-girl-and-the-plot-to-the-hero translates into a heroic protagonist. William Hurt, excellent as ever, adds a smooth moral ambiguity to the detective he plays in the film. Kiefer Sutherland, however, hands in one of the most peculiar performances I have ever seen; he is quirky and speaks with choppy, breathless words. I have always found Jennifer Connelly to be a bit of a snooze and here she regrettably fully recycles that old riff. Even when William Hurt as the detective reveals to her that her husband (John) is suspected for MURDER, she remains in this sedative, snooze-worthy state. Take it or leave it.
Lastly, it needs to be said that Dark City was made as a low-key, low-budget sci-fi diversion and this is apparent in its special effects that are on the hammy side. Nevertheless it compensates for its lack of panache with relevant Matrix-like notions such as: 'are we in fact the mere sum of our memories?' (memories is a big theme in the film). It still does not merit a higher grade than 7 out of 10 for me because it tipped over into listlessness at a few points to many and it feels emotionally distant. Highly worth the watch though.
7 out of 10