Dark City (1998)

Directed by Alex Proyas; produced by Andrew Mason and Alex Proyas

A man (Rufus Sewell) wakes in a hotel room, remembering nothing of who he is. A telephone call warning him that people are coming for him sends him on the run from strange-looking men, as well as the police, who suspect him of being a serial killer. Discovering himself to be John Murdoch, he is lost in a city of endless night, where everything, including memories, keeps changing.

Dark City combines science fiction and fantasy with film noir in a highly original movie. Though the principal actor is Sewell, the real stars are the set design and art direction. The setting looks like a 1940s American city, maybe New York, maybe Los Angeles, and neither. The clothes, technology and furniture suggest the same time and place, but with enough difference to imply that quality of dreams that places the dreamer in a location he recognizes, even though it looks nothing like the real thing.

The story is intriguing and involving. It builds as the characters, including William Hurt as a cerebral police detective who finds too much wrong with the case he’s inherited, realise there is more going on than simple if heinous crimes. There are some holes in the plot, such as the fact that if a person’s memories alter enough to make him a different individual, all the memories of those who ever met him would also need to change to support the new identity. And the ending is weak, though only because it is rather more literal than what had preceded it.

The script is well written, and complements the dream-like - at times nightmarish - aspects of the story. It is especially effective when dialogue gives vague or inconclusive answers which, paradoxically, accentuate features of the movie. At one point, Murdoch tries to reach a location only to find the subway doesn’t go so far; he must take the express. When the express doesn’t stop for him, he is told that of course it doesn’t stop: it’s the express. The lines spoken help create a puzzle seemingly without escape: frustrating for the characters but intriguing for the viewer.

Sewell does very well in the lead. He is suitably dark and brooding for an air of possible menace to be given to Murdoch, but sympathetic enough for a hero. Jennifer Connolly does a good job in the role of Murdoch’s bemused wife, and Hurt, who probably would have had a longer and fuller career as a leading man if audiences had not had to think about his performances, is likeable as the investigator.

Many of the cast is Antepodean (Proyas was raised in Australia), reflecting its origins, including Bruce Spence, Melissa George and Colin Friels. Richard O’Brien, who wrote the original stage version of The Rocky Horror Show (1973; adapted for the screen as The Rocky Horror Picture Show two years later) is the leading antagonist, Mr Hand. Ian Richardson gives both authority and evil to his part as Mr Book.

A cinematically visual treat, reminiscent of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, Dark City is an entertaining and, at times, mesmerising journey into a strange and frightening world. (If possible, see the director’s cut, which removes the exasperating exposition at the beginning, which gives the game away; the studio felt audiences needed to be told the whole story at the start.)