Grade:  D

Director:  Alex Proyas		Released:  February 1998
Writer:  Alex Proyas		MPAA Rating:  R
Players:  Rufus Sewell, William Hurt, Kiefer Sutherland, Jennifer Connelly		Running time:  100 minutes

Ratings System

Here's the deal with Dark City.  When I saw it originally I thought it was horrible, but since it's been four years since then, I thought I'd be fair and watch it again before writing this review.  Now, I NEVER fall asleep watching movies.  I mean never.  But it took me three tries to watch Dark City all the way through the second time.  I kept falling asleep.

The problem with this film is not ambition, not technical skill, not acting, not set design, not a hundred things.  The problem is ... what's the point?  A science fiction movie with no point to make is retarded.  I understand the concepts, and I understand the "statement" it is making about reality, but ... so what?  It doesn't mean anything, and it isn't very challenging.

It starts off pretty good, the first fifteen minutes or so set up an interesting premise and give viewers a lot of unanswered questions.  But as the film starts to answer the questions we discover that the answers aren't very interesting.

The film has a nice look to it, kind of Clive Barker meets film noir, too bad nice-looking doesn't help the story.  I know the easy response to someone who doesn't like Dark City is that, well, they just don't get it.  Trust me, I get it, I just don't care about it.  And frankly, I don't know why anybody else would either.

- crocoPuffs