All Quotes

"Well, the first draft had a fairly bleak end to the film, where the bad guys won at the end, but I just didn't like it. As I explored the story more and more it was about the individual's triumph in this world where individuality is being suppressed. Once I got into that mode there was no question that Murdoch had to win in the end and kind of wrest the power away from the strangers."

"Dark City, like its predecessor, is a stunningly visual smorgasbord of tenebrous eye-candy, all creeping shadows and urban malaise. Proyas' ability to make a twilight cityscape look menacing is like no one else's. But apart from the sensory input he throws at you, Dark City is a curiously unengaging experience. It's like the CD-ROM games Myst or Riven blown up to huge cinematic proportions while the critical ideas driving the play are left behind. For all its dark splendor, nothing much happens to make you squirm or gasp or weep, as in The Crow. It flatlines before it ever begins. The story seems ripped from one of Kafka's lesser nightmares: Everyman John Murdoch (Sewell) wakes up in a bathtub with blood seeping from his forehead. Suffering from amnesia, he doesn't know who or where he is, or what's going on (in this manner he functions as the viewer's surrogate throughout the film), but he soon runs into the mysterious Dr. Schreber (Sutherland), a paranoid, possibly dangerous physician newly graduated from the Peter Lorre School of Tics and Twitches. Schreber informs him that the city's inhabitants are the victims of some ongoing cosmic experiment being conducted by a race of black-clad, fedora-topped aliens called “The Strangers,” who hope to unlock the secrets of humanity by mixing and matching people's memories. The city, it seems, is entirely a construct of these film noir bad guys, who have the ability to alter reality at will (a power Murdoch himself has picked up as well). Proyas also throws in the only American actress to ever adequately survive a Dario Argento film – Jennifer Connelly – as Murdoch's estranged wife, and William Hurt (suitably vague) as a Forties-style gumshoe out to solve a series of citywide serial killings. Actually, the whole film has a post-WWII feel to it, thanks in part to George Liddle's spectacular production design and Dariusz Wolski's gorgeous cinematography, but the actual time period is anyone's guess. So is much of the plot, though Proyas, who also penned the script, does his best to make things adhere to some internal logic I never quite figured out. Dark City looks like a million bucks (or rather, a million bucks gone to compost), but at its dark heart it's a tedious, bewildering affair, lovely to look at but with all the substance of a dissipating dream."

""Dark City" grabs your eyeballs and squeezes. The new sci-fi thriller by director Alex Proyas rewrites movie rules, making its stand on visuals alone. It is hypnotic, haunting and, to be sure, dark. It is among the most memorable cinematic ventures in recent years. Maybe there's nothing wrong with a movie that is simply sensational to look at."

"The plot is weak, and the self- conscious script tries too hard to be knowing and sexually suggestive. Judging from the dialogue alone, "Dark City" is a clumsy melodrama. But the film's twisting of reality and its daring look—layered and off-kilter grays, greens and blacks—make it click. The big-hatted Strangers, for example, simply dematerialize as they walk through brick walls. The viewer knows it's just a special effect, but Proyas weights these now-you-see-'em, now-you-don't figures with unpredictability. They're superhuman and cruelly detached from the film's stupefied human characters."

"FREDERIC: Oh, false one, you have deceived me!"

"Ahhh! He's got some Titan in him yet!"

"What in my life, does not deserve celebrating?"

"My parents reached America the year I was born, 1939. Entering school, I was already exceptionally bright, my perfect scores on early test papers arousing such suspicion that I carefully achieved only average grades thereafter. What caused such precociousness? My parents were intellectually unremarkable, possessing no obvious genetic advantages. Perhaps I decided to be intelligent rather than otherwise? Perhaps we all make such decisions, though that seems a callous doctrine. By seventeen, my parents were both dead, and I faced a different decision. My inheritance offered life long idle luxury, and yet, needing nothing, I burned with the paradoxical urge to do everything. Do you understand? My intellect set me apart. Faced with difficult choices, I knew nobody whose advice might prove useful. Nobody living. The only human being with whom I felt any kinship died three hundred years before the birth of Christ. Alexander of Macedonia. I idolized him. A young army commander, he'd swept along the coasts of Turkey and Phoenicia, subduing Egypt before turning his armies towards Persia. He died, thirty-three, ruling most of the civilized world. Ruling without barbarism! At Alexandria, he instituted the ancient world's greatest seat of learning. True, people died ... perhaps unnecessarily, though who can judge such things? Yet how he nearly approached his vision of a united world! I was determined to measure my success against his. Firstly, I gave away my inheritance. to demonstrate the possibility of achieving anything starting from nothing. Next, I departed for Northern Turkey, to retrace my hero's steps. I wanted to match his accomplishment, bringing an age of illumination to a benighted world. Heh. I wanted to have something to say should we meet in the hall of legends. I followed the path of Alexander's war machine along the black sea coast, imagining his armies taking port after port, blood on ancient bronze. Perhaps because of the challenge it represented: the ancient world's greatest puzzle was there, a knot that couldn't be untied. Alexander cut it in two with his sword. Lateral thinking, you see. Centuries ahead of his time. Heading south, he entered Egypt through Memphis, where they proclaimed him son of Amon, judge of the dead, whose name means "hidden one." Under rule from Alexandria, the classic culture of the great Pharaohs was restored. I followed him through Babylon, up through Kabul to Samarkhand then down the Indus, where he met the first elephants of war. Where he'd turned back to quell dissent at home, I travelled on, through China and Tibet, gathering martial wisdom as I went. Alexander returned to Babylon to die of an infection, aged thirty-three, amongst its ruined ziggurats. I saw at last his failings. He'd not united all the world, nor built a unity that would survive him. Disillusioned, but determined, to complete my odyssey, I followed his corpse to its resting place in Alexandria. The night before returning to America, I wandered into the desert and ate a ball of hashish I'd been given in Tibet. The ensuing vision transformed me. Wading through powdered history, I heard dead kings walking underground, heard fanfares through human skulls. Alexander had merely resurrected an age of Pharaohs, their wisdom, truly immortal, now inspired me. What intellectual magnificence their system encouraged.. Ptolemy seeking the universe's pivot from his light-house at Pharos, Eratosthenes, measuring the world using only shadows … their greatest secrets entrusted to their servants, buried alive with them in sand-flooded chambers. Adopting Ramses the Second's Greek name and Alexander's free-booting style, I resolved to apply antiquity's teachings to today's world. Thus began my path to conquest … conquest not of men. But of the evils that beset them. Today, that conquest becomes assured, in which your unquestioning assistance has proven invaluable. Do you comprehend the triumph which you have contributed, the secret glory that it affords? Do you understand my shame at so inadequate a reward?"

"I suppose I'd have had to catch the bullet, wouldn't I?"

"SAMUEL: But, hang it all! you wouldn't have us absolutely merciless?"

"SONG - PIRATE KING: Oh better far to live and die"

"Craig Bierko - Lacerda"

"Lyle Lovett - The Road Person"

"Flea - Hippie"

"Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio – Gina Montana"

"Harris Yulin – Mel Bernstein"

"Robert Loggia – Frank Lopez"

"Míriam Colón – Georgina Montana"

"F. Murray Abraham – Omar Suarez"

"Paul Shenar – Alejandro Sosa"

"Ángel Salazar – Chi-Chi"

"Arnaldo Santana – Ernie"

"Pepe Serna – Angel Fernandez"

"Michael P. Moran – Nick the Pig"

"Al Israel – Hector the Toad"

"Dennis Holahan – Jerry"

"Mark Margolis – Alberto"

"Michael Alldredge – George Sheffield"

"Ted Beniades – Seidelbaum"

"Geno Silva – "The Skull""

"This is paradise. This is paradise, I'm tellin' you. This town's like a great big pussy just waitin' to get fucked. I'm tellin' you. I shoulda come here ten years ago. I'd have been a millionaire by this time. By this time, I'd have had my own boat, my own car, my own golf course."

"What I try to tell you? This country, you gotta make the money first. Then when you get the money, you get the power. Then when you get the power, then you get the woman. That's why you gotta make your own moves."

"I never fucked anybody over in my life that didn't have it coming to 'em. You got that? All I have in this world is my balls and my word, and I don't break 'em for no one."

"You know what capitalism is? Gettin' fucked!"

"Hey, fuck you man! Who put this thing together? Me, that's who! Who do I trust? Me!"

"[To the guests at the restaurant] What you lookin' at? You all a bunch of fuckin' assholes. You know why? You don't have the guts to be what you wanna be. You need people like me. You need people like me so you can point your fuckin' fingers and say, "That's the bad guy." So... what that make you? Good? You're not good. You just know how to hide, how to lie. Me, I don't have that problem. Me, I always tell the truth. Even when I lie. So say good night to the bad guy! Come on. The last time you gonna see a bad guy like this again, let me tell you. Come on. Make way for the bad guy. There's a bad guy comin' through! Better get outta his way!"

"I'm Tony Montana! You fuck with me, you fuckin' with the best!"

"Okay, Sosa. YOU WANNA FUCK WITH ME?! You fucking with the best! You wanna fuck with me? Okay. Okay, you little cockroaches... come on! You wanna play games? Okay, I can play with you. Come on! Okay, YOU WANNA PLAY ROUGH?! Okay! SAY HELLO TO MY LITTLE FRIEND!"

"[Shouting defiantly after being shot several times] Hey, how'd you like that? Huh? You fuckin' maricón! Hey, cockroaches! You think you can take me?! You need a fuckin' army if you're gonna take me! You hear?! C'mon! I'll take you all to fuckin' Hell! Come on! Come on! Come to me! Okay! Who you think you fuckin' with? I'm Tony Montana! You fuck with me, you fuckin' with the best! [While being shot repeatedly] Come on! I'm still standin', huh! Fuck! Come on! Go ahead! I'll take your fuckin' bullet! Come on! I'll take your fuckin' bullets! You think you can kill me with bullets?! I'll take your fuckin' bullets! Go ahead!"

"The eyes, chico. They never lie."

"Amigo, the only thing in this world that gives orders is balls, you got that? Balls."

"Why don't you try sticking your head up your ass? See if it fits."

"Do you know what a chazzer is, Frank? That's a pig that can't fly straight!"

"[To Manny over assassinating Rebenga, a former-Cuban politician] You know I kill a communist for fun... but for a green card, I'm gonna carve 'em up real nice."

"[Manny leads Rebenga along by menacing him through a tent in a camp uprising with all the detentionees chanting; "¡Libertad!" (Liberty), Tony ambushes Rebenga with a knife when he leaves the other way] Rebenga! From a friend you fucked!"

"Lesson number two: Don't get high on your own supply."

"How much? Well, there's an answer to that, too. [Writes down the number of monthly bribes on a napkin and shows it to Tony] Here's how much. Can you see it?"

"Yeah! That's on a monthly basis, same thing every month. Do you know how this works?"

"We tell you who's moving against you and we shake down who you want shaken down. Let's say that you've got a real problem making a collection. And then we step in for you. Got eight killers with badges working for me. When they hit, it hurts. Same thing works the other way. You feed me a bust now and then. Some cowboy setting himself up in business. Small-fry, you know? We like snacks."

"Well, that's not my business, Tony. We don't cross no lines. Listen, you think I want this conversation going any farther than this table? My guys got families. They're legitimate cops. I don't want to see them embarrassed. If they're embarrassed, they'll suffer. If they suffer, they'll make you suffer. D'you understand what I'm talking about? Thanks for the drink. By the way, I've got a vacation coming up. I'm gonna take the wife to London, England. We've never been there. So, throw in a couple of round-trip tickets, first class. You ought to smile more, Tony. You gotta enjoy yourself. Every day above ground is a good day."