Mr. Hand Receives The Harshness

Psychic Urban Architect Harshes Alien Squid-Brained Sociologists

Every night, the Strangers erase our memories, implant new ones, and restructure our lives as well as our city through their ability to “tune” reality to whatever they desire.  They have cool taste in vintage cars.  But life in Dark City is just one big experiment. John Murdock also discovers that he has this ability to tune, and wakes up out of his false reality to control his own destiny (no, he doesn’t become Steve Vai’s guitar tech.  Steve has his own tuner.).  A slobbering, wheezing Keifer Sutherland and a smokin’ Jennifer Connoly accompany said fish-eyed dreamer (played by Rufus Sewell) on his noir psychedelic road trip to find Shell Beach.  Which doesn’t exist, of course, until he makes it.  What kind of allegory would it be otherwise?  All the while, he is pursued by the Strangers–Mr. Hand, Mr. Book, & co., who are basically a kind of space squid living in a zombie corpses.   They wear black all the time and listen to Depeche Mode.  Okay, not really.  But they should.  They dress like they should.

A cool psychic battle wraps things up as John finds his inner Jedi, and hey, it’s a lot better than the psychic battle at the end of Harmageddon (then again, what isn’t?  A psychic battle between Col. Sanders and Walt Disney–neither of whom, to the best of my knowledge, have psychic powers–would be better than the psychic battle at the end of Harmageddon.)  A sequel is rumored.  Not to Harmageddon, that would suck.  Well, at least, people could walk around yelling “Genma is Coming” over and over.  Again.  No, a sequel to Dark City.  Yea for Murdoch to recapture his dream mellow.  Don’t harsh on the dream mellow. Dude. Why.