An interesting premise let down by weak exposition

Rating: Null/10 (30 May 2001)

Don't read these comments if you haven't seen the film, as it will ruin the surprises.
So, what do you expect a character to do when he wakes up in a strange place with no memory of who he is or how he got there? I thought we'd already covered this in Total Recall, but the extra element of this particular character being elaborately set up as a serial killer just didn't work for me. Rufus Sewell is barely believable as an amnesiac, leave alone a man with the required intensity to kill people, although this begins to work in the film's favour when we are introduced to such characters as the wife, played indifferently by Jennifer Connelly, and the detective who is pursuing him, played equally indifferently by William Hurt.
Indeed, Kiefer Sutherland steals the show here just by putting a little emotion into the character he is portraying. Comparing Connelly's cardboard cut-out performance during the musical number in the club with the way Sutherland performs his nervous, often hysterical character in a subsequent scene highlights the first major flaw of the story: the characters are just too indifferent to be cared about. The second major flaw in this film is the way that the exposition of the story is let down in the final stages of the film. Rather than resolve the story in a manner that either satisfies curiosity or leaves the appropriate sense of mystery about the Strangers and their purpose, Sutherland's character proceeds to explain everything about how he got to be involved with them and why they are conducting their experiments. Considering that he already explained this enough in the opening sequence, I found this part of the film to be completely unnecessary. The climax is pretty weak, too. I found the wholesale destruction of the Strangers' city to be most unsatisfying, and this whole Shell Beach thing really seemed like the usual happy-ending cop out. The way the Strangers execute their powers must have taken a lot of effort from the actors to stop them laughing, and there's really not much I can say about Melissa George's hideous cameo.
However, if there is one impressive thing about this film, it is the set design. The Strangers' underground civilisation in particular was very well realised, and the rapid changes in the city above them really must have given the continuity editors a lot of headaches. This is truly a film that demonstrates all of DVD's superiority, as almost all of the film takes place in darkness, which means the superior shadow detail and lack of the low-level noise that is inherent to VHS really comes in handy. Oh, and let's not forget, this is another one of those films that you haven't really seen at all unless you've seen it in its proper widescreen ratio.
All in all, I give this movie a seven out of ten. The acting loses it three points (it would have been at least five if not for Kiefer Sutherland), and the weak story resolution loses it another two, but the set design wins those two points back. Give Dark City a try without expecting too much beyond simple entertainment, and you will be justly rewarded.