Dark City
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Jennifer Connelly, Kiefer Sutherland, Richard O'Brien, Rufus Sewell, William HurtDVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
Published: 1998-07-01
DVD Release Date: 1998-07-29
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: New Line
Movie Reviews of Dark City
Movie Review: A Very Well-Done Alien-S/F Whodunit, Fascinating, and Ultimately Satisfying
Summary: 5 Stars
There's more than a little something in this for everyone. There is the dark, gritty city, film noir all over, with superb costuming and sets. You've got mysterious people, who are not us, but are very much like us. There's human experimentation, and wriggly-critter alien abduction. There are the bigger artistic/philosophical questions of identity, purpose, and ultimate direction. There's suspense, a complex whodunit, a mysterious and apparently unreachable destination, and a huge climactic battle. There's a little T&A, and a little bit of violence and action. There's all of this and more in Dark City.
Right away it looked like "The Marathon Man," with stark dark bathroom and the dark apartment beyond. I detected plenty of "The Matrix," with the sets, costuming, and the ubiquity of the ringing phone. The aliens themselves looked surprisingly like the "bug" sucked out of Neo's navel. The Australian location certainly contributed to more than a little visual and conceptual spillover to "The Matrix."
There was plenty "Blade Runner" in this film as well, and "Metropolis." The Strangers were more than once extremely reminiscent of the cenobites from the "Hellraiser" series, right down to the bald, white heads, the black leather outfits and the chattering teeth. I got quite a few "City of Lost Children" twinges as well, especially the scenes in the lowest parts of the city, on the water.
And there's the relentless noir aspect of the film. The darkness, the moisture-coated industrial texture of everything, the rust browns, dusky black, grimy grays, wet outside and dusty inside. The costuming is commensurately noir, right down to the detectives' fedoras, the Dick-Tracy-style police uniforms, the suspenders, everything. The two women in the film--Connelly as the wife, and that all too brief blond hooker--are deliciously young and tarted up fully, as you'd expect in noir.
Fans of Kiefer Sutherland will enjoy his Dr. Schreber character, about as far as could get from the superhard uber-agent Jack Bauer he's now most known for. How cool was it to see Richard O'Brien once again, into a role uniquely suited to him. The same goes for everyone's favorite Gyro Captain, Bruce Spence.
Now, Jennifer Connelly just didn't work for me in this film. She didn't pull off the molten-sexy club crooner, and her acting as the confused wife just didn't work either. (I was reminded of the also not-quite-convincing sultriness of Isabella Rossellini`s Dorothy Vallens in "Blue Velvet.") In the end, tending toward the sappy, she and Murdoch apparently hook up once again, that unspoken destiny of love bringing them together, much like Warren Beatty and Julie Christie (and her wild-ass hair) at the end of "Heaven Can Wait."
Ultimately, the film was satisfying. As I watched, I was pulled into Murdoch's quest to find Shell Beach, to find the way out of the city, and in the end to find out exactly what was going on. I feared an overly artistic, cryptic and needlessly complex symbolic solution, something more meaningful as an artistic and political statement, but which leaves a lot to be desired for the viewer who wants only to see a story progress toward a resolution. And the film came through on that. How cool was it for Murdoch and Bumstead (William Hurt) to break through the wall to find--quite unpleasantly--the vacuum of deep space? And bam, there's the shot of the endlessly morphing city floating through the void, with the subterranean machines of control below, to my mind an awful lot like the Cloud City in "The Empire Strikes Back."
And the end, it fit too, just right. Murdoch gets what he wants, which is knowledge and control, and his simple wish to get toward a place of remembered serenity. He achieves this using the Strangers' technology. The Strangers remain, not simply all eliminated by Murdoch, so cohabitation follows, and maybe the Strangers will even find what they're looking for. But there is no sappy, glorious return to Earth, nor is there even any Earth mentioned. That would be excessive Hollywood glop, and I'm so glad it wasn't there. They're all still out there, somewhere in the vast eternity of space, and that's that.
I know I'm a killjoy for pointing these out, but for me there were a couple of disconnects: 1) In the cases where Murdoch manages to kill a couple of the Strangers pursuing him, how is it these Strangers were not able to use their tuning skills to save themselves? Murdoch discovers his tuning abilities when they emerge unbidden as part of his instinctive needs to flee and be safe. One would have to assume that long-familiar tuning users would be able to put their skills to use instantly to save their own lives. 2) If the city moves and lurches and morphs every night, how is it that no one ever gets squashed amid all of that lurching real estate?
Overall, the effects were quite good. The big telepathic/telekinetic fight scene was just about right, with good sound, great effects, and sufficiently large in scale to make narrative sense, but not so big as to be ridiculous. Sound quality was excellent throughout.
Notes on this DVD: I found the extra features interesting, but not compelling. The bios of the primary stars are interesting, but in no way comprehensive. The bio information on the crew is a bit more interesting, but is one-dimensional, offering only a photo and text. The set design is interesting, but is a simple collection of drawings. As always, it's very interesting to see the official trailer only after viewing the film, and see how different the film is from what it is as advertised. There is no blooper reel, no deleted scenes, no alternative endings. I found the commentary to be rather bland.
Bottom line: This is a film I enjoyed very much, and will add to my personal collection.
Summary of Dark City
Alex Proyas, (The Crow) directs this futuristic thriller about a man waking up to find he is wanted for brutal murders he doesn't remember. Haunted by mysterious beings who stop time and alter reality, he seeks to unravel the riddle of his identity.If you're a fan of brooding comic-book antiheroes, got a nihilistic jolt from The Crow (1994), and share director Alex Proyas's highly developed preoccupation for style over substance, you might be tempted to call Dark City an instant classic of visual imagination. It's one of those films that exists in a world purely of its own making, setting its own rules and playing by them fairly, so that even its derivative elements (and there are quite a few) acquire their own specific uniqueness. Before long, however, the film becomes interesting only as a triumph of production design. And while that's certainly enough to grab your attention (Blade Runner is considered a classic, after all), it's painfully clear that Dark City has precious little heart and soul. One-dimensional characters are no match for the film's abundance of retro-futuristic style, so it's best to admire the latter on its own splendidly cinematic terms. Trivia buffs will be interested to know that the film's 50-plus sets (partially inspired by German expressionism) were built at the Fox Film Studios in Sydney, Australia, home base of director Alex Proyas and producer Andrew Mason. The underground world depicted in the film required the largest indoor set ever built in Australia. Befitting a film of such ambition, the DVD includes a feast of bonus features, including audio commentaries by the director, producer, writers, and cinematographer, and also by film critic Roger Ebert, who named Dark City one of the best films of 1998. Also included is an isolated music track, an interactive game, and a photo gallery of production stills and set design sketches. --Jeff Shannon
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