Movie Review- Dark City

Originally Written 12/12/15

            I feel like Dark City's concept would have worked better as a novel. The idea of aliens manipulating a city trapped in space and constantly rewriting the memories of the inhabitants is too wordy and exposition-heavy to work well as a movie. Nevertheless, the visuals of the movie are excellent. Alex Proyas also directed The Crow, and brings with him his heavily stylized visuals. He decided to stop aping Tim Burton this time, and instead went for a retro-futuristic 1940's film noir look. There lots of striking greens and blues throughout, and they look fantastic. Unfortunately Proyas could not completely shake off his goth phase, and as such the alien villains look like wannabe vampire goth kids in fedoras and Cenobite clothes. There is also one alien who is a child, and this is supposed to be creepy, but it is more comical than anything.

            The editing in this movie is an eyesore. Proyas must have developed ADD in the editing room, because he cannot seem to hold onto a shot more than two seconds. The constant cutting kills the potential suspense of several scenes, and leads to some difficult to follow action scenes. I wish he would have held on to shots longer to give the viewer time to absorb the film's striking visuals.

            Keifer Sutherland's character is extremely irritating. He plays an asthmatic scientist who works for the aliens. He literally takes a deep breath between every sentence. It reminds me of the wheelchair-bound kid Stevie from Malcolm in the Middle. The filmmakers also decided to give most of the expository lines to Sutherland, making it very difficult to keep up with the film's dense details in between his raspy breaths.

            The ending was very disappointing. There's a psychic mind battle between the hero and villain, which basically amounts to close-ups of the actors grimacing intercut with things exploding, as if they were destroying things with their minds. It is a really lame ending to a film that had had inventive visuals, like the city restructuring scenes.

            I saw the theatrical cut of the film, which according to fans is apparently inferior to the director's cut. I do not see how it could fix the problems I had with the movie. That being said, there is still much to like about the film. The visuals and production design are unique, and a big improvement over the visuals in The Crow. And while I think there was too much exposition, the story is still inventive and has plenty of interesting ideas. Dark City is flawed, but it is still worth watching if you are a big fan of science fiction films.