New Line Cinema, Rated R
Directed by Alex Proyas
Written by Alex Proyas & Lem Dobbs & David S. Goyer

I didn't see Proyas' first film "The Crow", but I probably will because I was so impressed by this one. This bizarre, in-your-face story concerns John Murdoch (Rufus Sewell), a man who finds himself awakening (after an attention-grabbing opening sequence) in a tub with absolutely no memory of why he is there. He remembers being a child, but nothing that happened in recent years. He finds a dead body in his apartment, and is soon the prime suspect in a murder case investigated by Inspector Frank Bumstead (William Hurt, in a nice performance). He finds himself running from Bumstead as well as from the Strangers, a group of aliens who stop time to "tune" people's minds as experiments. The way all of this is woven together is quite interesting. Kiefer Sutherland shows he can play a different kind of character as Dr. Schreber, the man who is secretly trying to help Murdoch stop the Strangers, and Sewell's scenes with Jennifer Connelly (playing his "wife", Emma) really get across the fact that they love each other but are confused about whether they should be in love. The plot is almost up there with "Star Wars" in its comic book-imaginativeness. It's a very nice mixture of film noir and science fiction. The breathtaking cinematography and art direction draw from such classics as "Metropolis", "Blade Runner", and "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari", among others. Yet it also stands on its own. The lighting effects here are spectacular, and they are used in a subtle way to denote the fact that time has stopped. The ending is both shocking and satisfying, and it's a rare occasion that I am as glued to the screen as I was while watching this film. I will be very interested in seeing what other strange worlds Proyas will take us to next. ****

My mini-review has also been featured here.

---

Back to the main page