Dark City (1998)
IMDb meta-data is runtime of 1 hour and 40 minutes, rated 7.6 by 203,000 layabouts.
Genre: Sy Fy
DNA: Anglo
Verdict: Where’s Dagwood.
Tagline: [I forget.]
It’s all pretty mysterious, but Auriole Zen wakes up in Gotham City and concludes he is an amnesiac killer. Seemed obvious at the time. (See Sherlock Holmes The Woman in Green [1944].) He scoots before John Law arrives in the form of — wait for it — Inspector Bumstead, known as Dagwood to me.
The parenthetical reference above is relevant because most of the dark setting is 1940s: fedoras, ash trays, wide lapels, automats, cars, trench coats, and cold water walk-up tenements. Yep.
All of this is presided over by men in Gestapo coats and pancake makeup led by Francis Urquhart under a ton of makeup in a latex suit. Round and round it goes.
By some means or other, Zen and Dagwood team up, brokered by Mrs Zen. They find out Neo was right though his movie has not yet been released.
A great deal of eye candy with very little plot. Water is mentioned as crucial and then…forgotten. Yes, I got all the guff about the experiments and it made no sense. Ask Neo next year.
I saw a few refugees from more diverting material like Popov from Loveboy.
The doctor seemed laboured and superfluous, but we viewers are like that. Opinionated.
Yes, I know it is supposed to be about dreams, memory, and reality. If we don’t remember it, did it happen? If we do remember it, did it happen? Are our memories real or not? Does it matter? All very Marcel Proust, but — pssst! — no one seems to try very hard, say by writing things down, or cutting a hole in a sock, or breeding mayflies. Or even reading a book or eating a madeleine.
Roger Ebert waxed lyrical about it, both the look and content. Hmm. Not convinced myself.
The Gotham Tourist Board, by the way, claims the sun does shine there. Some times.