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HOTEL ARTEMIS
Director: Drew Pearce Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Dave Bautista, Charlie Day, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Jeff Goldblum MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:37 Release Date: 6/8/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | June 7, 2018 Despite the movie's futuristic setting and intriguing world, Hotel Artemis is primarily an actors' showcase. There's something both admirable and disappointing about that—admirable because it's unexpected and disappointing because it seems to let a good backdrop go to waste. The world of writer/director Drew Pearce's feature debut is all backdrop, seen in long shots from the roof of the eponymous hotel and on TV news reports about a city in crisis. The place is Los Angeles in the year 2028, and just about everything has been privatized, from water to the police force, which is holding back rioters who are understandably angry about the private water company shutting down its supply to the population. None of this really matters. It's just an excuse to get a group of thieves, contract killers, and criminals of various sorts and of various moral standards together in the cramped hallways, secret passages, and eavesdrop-friendly rooms of this hotel. We're presented with a handful of characters, and then Pearce lets them at each other. The results are predictable enough, in the way that certain characters are ready to backstab their fellow criminals or the way that others really have hearts of gold hidden beneath the surface. These actors, though, play their roles with the right levels of theatricality and sincerity. The bad ones are sincere and over-the-top in the badness. The decent ones are sincere in their secret decency. Overseeing all of it is a character known mainly as the Nurse (Jodie Foster), who runs the hotel—a euphemism of sorts for an emergency clinic for criminals who are injured on the job. She has been at this work for years—decades, if you count her legitimate medical experience before taking the job at the Artemis. It's strange to recall that Foster has been absent from the big screen for five years, and it's stranger to think that this role, in this particular movie, is the one that drew her back. Whatever it is that appealed to her has resulted in a great net benefit for the movie. Watching Foster scurrying down the Art Deco-style-and-decorated corridors of this space, like some busy little creature who's operating primarily on instinct, we immediately have a pretty clear picture of the Nurse. Here's a woman who keeps busy because she has to—to stop working would be to stop existing in any meaningful way. She has a secret past, of course, which she hides from her patients and staff, involving a dead son whose apparently cause of death likely brought her to this place, if only to save a few lost souls. Even her trusty orderly/heavy Everest (Dave Bautista), whose name—given Bautista's mountainous physical presence—should be self-explanatory, doesn't know about the Nurse's past. The Nurse and her laser-focused movements through the clinic provide the movie its rhythm. In the Artemis on this particular night of chaos in the streets, we meet some criminals, all of whom are assigned nicknames based on the room, named after a famous vacation spot, in which they're staying. Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown) and his brother Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry) were involved in a botched bank robbery, during which the two were shot. The professional assassin Nice (Sofia Boutella)—the city, not the adjective—has a self-inflicted gunshot wound, which, she says, was an excuse to get off the streets during the rioting. Acapulco (Charlie Day) is a loudmouthed, quick-to-insult criminal of vague intent and means, and he's eager to call in a helicopter to get him out of the city. The minimal plot involves some diamonds that Waikiki and Honolulu unintentionally stole from the top crime lord in the city, an injured police officer (played by Jenny Slate) who knew the Nurse back in the day, and the imminent arrival of that crime lord for medical treatment. Waikiki has to keep himself and his brother hidden until Honolulu recovers. The Nurse has to hide the cop, lest the crime lord kill them both for the betrayal. Nice has an ulterior motive for coming to the Artemis tonight. Pearce's methods are mostly observational—watching how these characters scheme, listening to the ways they talk, uncovering if there's any good in them. The screenplay revels in the dialogue between these characters, and apart from Foster, whose performance is almost preternaturally attuned to the tone of the movie, the rest of the cast is solid. Brown is achingly sincere as the robber who just wanted out of the business but came back for his brother. Bautista adds a thick layer of faithfulness to his brutish orderly, and Boutella is conniving and fierce as the professional killer. Also appearing to lesser extents are Zachary Quinto, as the youngest and most insecure son of the crime lord, and Jeff Goldblum, subtly hamming it up (as only Goldblum can do) as that crime lord—the mischievous but ruthless Wolf King. Ultimately, though, Pearce seems uncertain what to do with his setting, which is mostly ignored, or his characters, who inexorably move toward a bloody standoff. Hotel Artemis is a one-concept movie. While there's little denying that Pearce has done as much as he can with that single idea, there's also no denying that the movie leaves us wanting much more than its superficial examination of criminals under pressure. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for
violence and language throughout, some sexual references, and brief drug
use)
