the best thing -- in fact , the only good thing -- i can say about dark city is that it made me want to go see
l .
a . confidential again .
or go rent body heat , to see william hurt
do some real noir .
or even -- god help me -- palmetto .
alex proyas 's new movie screams atmosphere .
i screamed , too , " get me out of this theater !
"
new line cinema spent millions of dollars creating the expressionistic film noir visuals and paying the actors , and does n't have any way to get it back .
i paid $ 4 .
25 for a matinee screening and do n't have any way to get my money back , either .
you 'll hear a lot from other critics about the look and feel of this movie .
i will admit that the cinematographers and costume designers and set artists and cgi graphics geeks all worked hard to create a stunning , nightmarish future world where it 's always a late night in 1948 , complete with rotary phones and automats and fedoras .
i 've got news for you fellows --
i do n't care how hard you worked , or how visually stunning this movie looks -- you wasted your time and mine , working on a movie without a plot , without a clear sense of direction of where it wanted to go , without a soul or a reason to care .
the movie starts out
oh - so - promising .
john murdoch ( rufus sewell ) is lying in a bathtub in the sort of seedy hotel that in real life , would have been boarded up long ago .
there is a dead , mutilated prostitute in the other room -- a surprise , as he has lost his memory .
the phone rings : it 's a sinister - sounding man , claiming to be his doctor , telling him to flee for his life .
all well and good , right ?
wrong .
apparently , someone decided that the audience was just a bit too dim to figure out the intricacies of the plot .
( this is getting to be a popular assumption in hollywood . )
so , the actual beginning of the movie is not sewell running for his life , rather , it 's a voice - over narration by the aforementioned doctor ( keifer sutherland ) explaining exactly what is going on and who is responsible .
it 's as though sam the piano player had told us that rick and
ilsa had been getting it on in paris in the first three minutes of casablanca .
no
, wait , that 's not fair to casablanca .
it 's more like watching a new plotline at the first of the show -- or if you want to know how i really feel , having an off - screen narrator explain that gilligan wo n't be getting off the island in this episode .
> from here
, the coherence of the plot goes down faster than ( insert monica lewinsky joke here ) .
the characters just wander around the city aimlessly and bump into each other for no apparent reason , and that 's what moves the plot .
what we 're left with is a string of unanswered questions that do n't make any sense .
we 're given aliens with unlimited omnipotent powers , yet they forget to use them at critical moments and get themselves killed .
we 're given a hero who can " tune " into these same powers , yet he only uses them when it 's convenient to the plot .
we 're given a whole long list of loose ends that go nowhere
usually , critics will say that an actor playing an underwritten part " is n't given much to do .
" in this movie , no one is given anything to do .
sewell is given the impossible role of a man who does n't remember anything , and plays it like . . .
um . . .
a man who does n't remember anything .
the aliens are tall , pasty - faced , and bald , and wear long black cloaks and fedoras to remind us that they 're evil -- and there 's a child alien as well , straight out of an anne rice novel .
sutherland is saddled with a limp , a twitchy eye , and a breathy accent to remind us that he 's in league with the aliens .
to its credit , dark city boasts two impressive bits of casting .
william hurt is perfectly cast as the world - weary inspector charged with catching the man who is murdering prostitutes all over the city .
jennifer connelly , playing sewell 's love interest , is given two all - too - brief moments on screen as a lounge singer -- and turns in the sexiest performace this side of jessica rabbit .
but instead of the dogged policeman and the femme fatale given central treatment in the script ( the way they would be in any self - respecting noir movie ) they 're almost tangiential to the plot , such as it is .
the problem with dark city is this : it 's a bad science fiction movie pretending to be film noir .
the essence of film noir is n't , as proyas seems to beleive , breathy dialogue or snap - brim fedoras or tall , bald evil villains who would make peter lorre curl up in a corner .
dark city has not one bit of intrigue , moral ambiguity , suspense , or anything else that keeps us coming back to the noir classics .
dark city is like the intricately carved door that kate winslet floats on in titanic .
it 's an exceptionlly well - made and intricately designed piece of flotsam , sailing around and around the middle of the ocean , going nowhere .
they 're almost tangiential to the plot , such as it is you wasted your time and mine , working on a movie without a plot , without a clear sense of direction of where it wanted to go , without a soul or a reason to care we 're given a whole long list of loose ends that go nowhere the coherence of the plot goes down has not one bit of intrigue a string of unanswered questions that do n't make any sense the problem with dark city is this : it 's a bad science fiction movie pretending to be film noir