Dark City (1998)

A brilliant, complex film starring RUFUS SEWELL (Cold Comfort Farm), KIEFER SUTHERLAND (A Time To Kill), JENNIFER CONNELLY (Inventing the Abbotts), Richard O'Brien (The Rocky Horror Picture Show) and WILLIAM HURT (Michael), Dark City is a tale of mythic proportions about one man's battle to reclaim his destiny.

John Murdoch (Sewell) awakens alone in a strange hotel to find that he is wanted for a series of brutal murders. The problem is that he can't remember whether he committed the murders or not. In fact, most of his memories have completely vanished, and for one brief moment, he is convinced that he has gone stark raving mad.

Pursued by Detective Bumstead (Hurt), Murdoch seeks to unravel the twisted riddle of his identity. As he edges closer to solving the mystery, he stumbles upon a fiendish underworld controlled by a group of ominous beings collectively known as The Strangers. These shadow-like figures possess the ability to stop time and alter people's perceptions -- a process known as Tuning. Through an evolutionary anomaly, Murdoch is also imbued with this power and thus, he alone is able to resist The Stangers' control over his mind.

And for that, he must be destroyed.

With the help of the inscrutable Doctor Schreber (Sutherland), Murdoch is able to stay a step ahead of his adversaries while he slowly pieces together the labyrinthine puzzle of his past -- his bittersweet childhood, his love for his estranged wife Emma (Connelly) and the key to a hideous series of murders which he is suspected of committing. Dark City is produced by Andrew Mason and Alex Proyas. Based on a story by Alex Proyas, the screenplay is by Alex Proyas and Lem Dobbs (Kafka) and David S. Goyer (The Crow 2). The film is directed by Alex Proyas.