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Special Features
- All-new director's cut and original theatrical cut of the film
- Documentaries: Introduction by Alex Proyas, Memories of Shell Beach (making of), Architecture of Dreams
- Production gallery
- Text essays
- Neil Gaiman review of Dark City
- Director's cut fact track
- Theatrical trailer
- Multiple audio commentary tracks featuring director Alex Proyas, writers Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer, director of photography Dariusz Wolski, production designer Patrick Tatopoulos, and film critic Roger Ebert
Editorial Reviews
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Customer Reviews
The director's cut is 111 minutes with the already mentioned changes listed here and everywhere - including the removal of the beginning narration, more character development scenes, etc. The transfer looks phenomenal (compared to how I saw it prior - even upscaled). I played the title on both a Panasonic plasma and a Bravia via a 80 GB PS3 and Sony BDP301. I paused the film in over 34 spots of action, dark contrasts, bright colorings and various hue changes. Virtually every frame looked excellent, especially the scenes with Jennifer Connelly singing; the majority of the colorings were in her scenes until those last beach sequences.
The special features are the same between the DVD and Blu with the exception of one of the commentaries. The 7.1 DTS HD sound was enjoyable, even though two of the channels were primarily used in the large machine sequences only.
A worthwhile Blu addition and I did not see too many failings in the grain reduction/transfer issues I had read about.
Set in a dark world--literally dark, as no one seems to remember being out during the day--the film focuses on John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), a man who awakens amnesiac to find a murdered woman nearby. Soon thereafter pursued by the police (led by William Hurt), he must solve the mystery of his missing memories and eerie pursuers.
Helped along the way by a woman claiming to be his wife (Jennifer Connelley) and a pendactic psychiatrist (Kiefer Sutherland), Murdoch learns that his pursuers are a race of aliens with the power to warp reality with their minds who continually change the city and the memories and even lives of the people inhabiting it in an experiment designed to save their lives. Murdoch has developed their same power to "tune" and save humanity from the aliens' machinations.
The film's theme of questionable reality--carried across on two levels as both human memories are manipulated and the physical world itself changed on a nightly basis--is done fairly well if somewhat less successfully than the in the Matrix.
Replete with dark imagery suiting the film noir genre and quite at home in Blade Runner, the movie makes for a stunning visual performance. The aliens are masterfully done as frightening and eerie outsiders. My only complaint is that I was able to grasp the film's actions and meanings on a first viewing with little difficulty; I had expected to come out with the sense of, "What the heck?!" that would require two or three viewings to fully digest the film's depth. Yet that aside, the film is still a definite watch for any fans of film noir or reality-questioning sci-fi.
The DVD includes a number of special features to sweeten the deal, including two commentary tracks, the theatrical trailer (whose music unfortunately didn't make it into the film), an isolated score track, and more. The video and audio transfers are crisp and clean.
The premise of the movie, outlined by Kiefer Sutherland's "mad doctor" character as we descend into the "Dark City", is that a race of aliens is dying, although they are advanced enough to control spacetime through thought alone, a process known as "tuning." His character is central to the plot of the aliens' experiments with a cast of human subjects by rearranging their memories nightly - not just within an individual, but from one person to the next. The whys and wherefores revolve around one John Murdoch, played with urgency by Rufus Sewell and shadowed throughout by John Hurt's angular, intense police detective.
In this era of pretentious, over the top sci-fi films (The Matrix) Dark City stands as a triumph of imagination and will endure for years.
POINT 1: This is one TERRIFIC movie! Read more
