Dark City

By RICHARD CORLISS

With feel-good comedies and soapy ship operas dominating commercial cinema, the visionaries are in retreat. Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) and Paul Verhoeven (Total Recall) have renounced the form. That leaves the creation of dank, luscious worlds within worlds to Alex Proyas. And he'll do fine. The Egyptian-born, Australian-raised director of The Crow has a chilling new fever dream called Dark City--a reminder of how sensuous a visual trip movie watching can be.

John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell) wakes up in a strange room with a dead woman. Who is she? he wonders. For that matter, who is he? In this dark city, dour bald aliens, known as the Strangers, have refitted humans with fake memories. Perhaps John is married to pretty Emma (Jennifer Connelly), perhaps not. Perhaps his world will end before he finds out.

Sewell, a Pre-Raphaelite hunk who also shines in the sumptuous new Dangerous Beauty, flashes a sullen magnetism here. But the playing is not the thing; the play of images is. In this city--part Moderne, part Magritte, part Manhattan collapsed onto itself--houses sprout like tropical flowers; office buildings magically morph in a technique that might be called Virtual Realty. You have to watch carefully, for this is not an ingratiating film. It drops you into a foreign landscape without guidebook or translator. It is as cool and distant as the planet the Strangers come from. But, Lord, is Dark City a wonder to see.

--By Richard Corliss