Hidden City

I read all the other comments - are we watching the same movie?? Apparently this director went on to bigger and better things, but this movie was not good, not even for a starter. The premise was okay, but the execution was not. The female lead needed to stop yelling, at the least. She was never a sympathetic character; I thought she was annoying. The dialog was shallow, and did not really develop the characters. Lots of walking, no talking. It was a 15 minute plot in movie form. Charles Dance seems to have spent most of his earlier film career in fuzzy, badly produced movies. I wonder what could have happened had he spent more time in Hollywood, or if Merchant and Ivory had found places for him in their films.... When he has the right material, he is good. I waited for this movie to show more intrigue - all I got was waiting for scenes where there was some real action and some real acting (and scenes that did not feature the female lead). Oh, well.

I only watched this picture because of my current obsession with Charles Dance. It's a very strange film, rather too artsy and noir for my taste, but in general a pretty good picture.

A few items: far too much is made of the "hidden city" component. Any older city has subterranean tunnels and chambers. Disused subways, dry drains, utility shafts and connectors, power cable channels, catacombs, and sewage pipes form a veritable honeycomb beneath a city's surface. Not secret so much as not relevant to the daily life of ordinary people. That these areas might be useful for file storage is sensible and efficient.

The more intriguing mystery for me was why the writers writers (who otherwise did an excellent job) failed to give us explanations to these questions:

Why would an intelligent, sophisticated, educated man disregard several days' worth of scheduled meetings in order to assist a complete stranger in an ill-defined quest for information of questionable value?

Why, having learned the mysterious government secret, do the pair do absolutely nothing with what they've learned? It's implausible that anybody would go to so much trouble merely to satisfy idle curiosity.

And finally, why do the pair decide to continue rummaging for secrets?

On the plus side, "Hidden City" does include a very excellent performance by Charles Dance. I think that one of the more difficult challenges for an actor is speaking lines that convey information the audience needs but would never be uttered in real-life conversation. The film contains an astonishingly large number of such lines, and Dance delivered them so naturally that only when I'd finished watching did I realize. In fact, I can't think of a better example of that sort of acting. Well done, Charles Dance!

One of the better British films of the last 20 years and criminally neglected - it doesn't appear to be currently available on video let alone DVD.

Intriguing (and somewhat unsettling) plot. Sensible portrayals - no overacting, Unusual settings - a London rarely seen either in life or on screen. Well constructed - the atmosphere builds beautifully.

All in all, it puts so much of recent British cinema to shame.

And we go and bury it.

I loved this film for two reasons.

Firstly, it was well written and the direction was strong which is something often lacking in a British film.

Secondly, the scenes of London were fantastic; especially those parts of the city not always open to the public eye.

What a strange movie. The story is amazingly thought-provoking and intriguing. Think of all the hidden secrets a city like London hides beneath it's surface? All the archives of wartime experiments, government mysteries, documents and information never meant for public eye.

You have a young woman trying to convince a statistician (?) played by Charles Dance that there are hidden messages or clues of a bigger picture in some wartime archive films.

The story sadly never quite uses all of it's potential. It's interesting all the way, but you're never really sure what is going on until the very end and the motivations of the characters are left a bit unknown. They're basically just intrigued and driven by pure interest rather than a real cause.

What makes the movie a bit messy and difficult to follow, is the fact that there are a few separate leads they're following, the archived films and a few documents they find at a waste dump. You also have people trying to catch them, but you're not really sure why. At least I was left a bit puzzled of what's going on at times, but maybe that was the point. You never know what you find, if you just look carefully.

Definitely an interesting story, but the execution is a bit flawed and dated. It's got a very strong late 80s vibe to it and it's a bit of an artsy one. Someone might call this a "strange one", but definitely worthwhile if you catch it somewhere.