Theres a surprising amount of invention in the grimy new thriller Hotel Artemis, a B-movie with admirable upward ambition. Set 10 years in the future, when medical technology has advanced but all else has descended into a privatized hell of class warfare, Drew Pearces film is loaded with clever speculative details. Nanotechnology repairs human tissue, 3-D printers make serviceable if unreliable replacement organs, and so on. All that progress comes in handy for the guests of the eponymous hotel, which is really a hospital hideout for well-connected—and dues-paying—criminals.
Jodie Foster, of all people, plays the hotels weary, no-nonsense nurse—shuffling from suite to suite, giving care and not brooking any guff. When we meet her, the biggest riot in Los Angeles history is raging outside, as a downtrodden proletariat protests a conglomerate that has taken control of the citys water supply. (The police are also a private security force.) Those politics are just background, though, as Hotel Artemis is more concerned with the goings-on inside, where a bank robber (Sterling K. Brown) and his injured brother (Brian Tyree Henry) have just checked in. They stole something from L.A.s biggest, baddest crime boss, one of several intriguing plot elements that Pearce introduces without really following through on.
Further complicating matters is the presence of a slinky assassin (Sofia Boutella) whos tangling with a boorish arms dealer (Charlie Day), but is clearly at the hotel to fry bigger fish. Hotel Artemis arranges all these pieces nicely, Pearce setting the stage for a bumpy night, both a siege and an escape. And for a while, the film actually delivers on that promise with style and offbeat humor. Foster, at first a little jarring with her hard-to-place working-stiff accent, grows on you; she plays the part with a terse intensity that makes all the silliness around her seem somehow serious. She has good chemistry with Brown, who in turn has a cracking rapport with Boutella. For roughly its first half, Hotel Artemis glides nicely on all of Pearces world-building and the casts confident performances.
But as the power flickers at the Artemis and dangerous foes close in, the movie starts to wobble. Pearce has maybe put too many variables in play and has trouble connecting them into a unified narrative. A lot of what happens in Hotel Artemis is ultimately pretty arbitrary, unrelated to any preceding event or character choice. Granted, Fosters character is the only one that really gets any fleshing out in terms of motivation—though giving an actress in a genre movie a past involving a dead kid isnt anything new or exciting. In fact, thats one tired trope Id like to banish for a long while, even if an actress like Foster is able to wring some genuine pathos out of it.
Something about the movie suggests that Pearce has a more thoroughly interwoven movie somewhere in a drawer or on a cutting-room floor; theres enough wit and care put into the films framework that I dont think its creator would, in ideal circumstances, be so hasty with the finished product. Maybe there was some producer meddling or skittishness about a too-long run time. Whatever the reason, Hotel Artemis has a frustrating incompleteness about it, as if someone started telling you a really interesting story and then some jerk stepped in and rudely told them to wrap it up already. I wish I could see what the more considered, longer Hotel Artemis looked like.
Or maybe this is exactly Pearces intended film, and Im just cutting him too much slack. Im inclined to do that because I love some of the ideas in the movie. Its sketch of a not-at-all-distant future feels bracingly credible. Its politics are, I think, mostly in the right place. And on a purely aesthetic level, the film has myriad graces. The hotel, deco and a little dingy, has an art-directed, Guillermo del Toro vibe; its theatrical artifice nicely complements the movies arch, almost satiric tone. Pearces camera moves nimbly through the space, evocatively capturing both the dimly lit intimacy of the interior and the chaotic, burning city beyond. Theres a lot to like here!
Which is why its such a shame to watch the movie stumble. Still, I was expecting the worst when I reluctantly settled into my screening and was certainly not served that. Undercooked plot mechanics aside, Im still rooting for this idiosyncratic little film. Maybe Im just starved for movies with a point of view at the moment, when so much on offer has been churned out of a factory. Sure, Hotel Artemis bears similarities to John Wick, but not so many that its a problem. For the most part, warts and all, this is a movie I havent seen before. What a shame that there probably wont be a sequel.
Get Vanity Fairs HWD NewsletterSign up for essential industry and award news from Hollywood.Richard LawsonRichard Lawson is a columnist for Vanity Fair's Hollywood, reviewing film and television and covering entertainment news and gossip. He lives in New York City.
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