Dark City (1998) Movie Review

God, I love Jennifer Connelly.

Dark City is a dark fantasy, cyberpunk-themed psychological thriller. A man by the name of John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a confused panic and finds that he can’t remember anything about himself or his life. After getting his bearings, he discovers that he is actually wanted for a string of serial murders involving multiple sultry women of the night (AKA – Whores).

As we follow his descent into this maddening dark city, Murdoch begins to discover that everything he knows, or thinks he knows, may not be reality at all.

With a great cast leading this film, there is no shortage of good scenes or expertly delivered dialogue. The great Kiefer Sutherland plays Dr. Daniel Schreber, a cowardly genius scientist known for his understanding of the human mind. The beautiful Jennifer Connelly plays Emma Murdoch, John’s spurned wife, whose troubled marriage has led to her unfaithful actions.

The acting was fantastic, which is to be expected when you have such high-calibre actors and actresses in a film. There was no performance I watched and cringed at. It never reminded me that I was watching a film. Instead, I felt like I was actually in the world, watching and listening to people who lived inside this brutalist nightmare.

I really enjoy stories set in dark, gritty science-fiction worlds. This movie delivers on that: a giant concrete city filled with oppression, surveillance, and shadowy authoritarian figures. The confusing mess of a dilapidated brick city with towering oppressive structures sets the atmosphere for the film. These towers are connected by what appear to be bridges, with a permanent, eerie fog settling amongst the darkness of the city. It’s almost like living in Canada!

The music did its job in adding to the mood of the film. When Jennifer Connelly performed a rendition of the song “Sway,” popularized by Dean Martin, it added to the neo-noir feel of the entire movie. The soundtrack was composed by Trevor Jones, who focused on haunting and discordant sounds to elevate the atmosphere. I think that music plays an important role in all films, and this movie is no exception. The music worked for what they were trying to do.

In 1998, audiences were still reeling from the horrible CGI that was Spawn. Considering CGI during this time looked like a wet pile of excrement that a fat kid shat out after his mother fed him too much Taco Bell, I’d say this movie is passable for what they had at the time. Sure, it wasn’t advanced CGI, but they did what they could. Is the CGI dated by today’s standards? Absolutely. If some artist handed this in today, they’d probably imagine he was going to be making a movie about talking cows in China. The CGI never took me out of the film.

I never sat there with my mouth open, saying, “What the fuck are they trying to do?” with the CGI. Instead, it captured my attention. I found myself sitting there wondering what the next CGI scenes would look like, and not in a bad way. You know how ancient historians look at old piles of rock and are impressed? That’s basically how I felt. It’s a nice little time capsule for how things used to be.

I really did not like the costume design of the antagonists in the movie. They were presented in such an odd way. It was like a mix of a BDSM club, Hellraiser (come to think of it, Hellraiser is inspired by BDSM subculture), and Darth Vader without his helmet on. Like a giant grey, shrivelled-up scrotum poking out of tight leathers.

The rest of the film had this neo-noir aesthetic, yet the antagonists were dressed up like they belonged in another film. They definitely leaned much harder into science fiction, and I wish they had kept them grounded in the overall aesthetic of the world.

The costume design did not distract me from the overall quality of the film. It was an odd choice, but it’s actually understandable based on the story they were trying to tell. If their outfits were maybe a bit less “leathery,” I would not even have mentioned them.

Every element of this film reinforces the oppressive neo-noir world it has built. The CGI makes you feel like you’re seeing something that shouldn’t be there. The acting never takes away from the film; instead, it enhances it. The music adds to the overall mood and atmosphere. While the visual effects and antagonist designs have aged strangely, in retrospect, that actually adds to the film’s charm. Dealing with themes of “what makes you who you are?” and whether reality is actually what we think it is, the film ultimately resolves its central question: what is it that truly makes you who you are?

With all that being said, what’s my takeaway from this movie? Would I recommend you spend the hour and forty minutes it takes to watch this one?

I say it is definitely worth a watch. This is a great older film with a great story, following intriguing characters set in a dark, eerie, cyberpunk-esque world. The CGI and animation used were stunning for the time compared to a lot of other movies I’ve had the misfortune to suffer through.

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ – Storyline
⭐⭐⭐⭐⬛ – Special Effects (For the Time)
⭐⭐⭐⭐⬛ – Atmosphere
⭐⭐⭐⭐⬛ – Dialogue / Performance Quality

Overall Rating: 8.5 / 10

This rating is based on the standards of the time period in which the movie was released. The CGI and special effects were impressive for the time. It is a high-quality film that many people would enjoy, and I recommend it fully to people interested in gritty sci-fi.

Written by Jason N. Mulhall