Hotel Artemis (2018)

25 Wednesday Jul 2018

Tags

Action, Charlie Day, Crime, Dave Bautista, Drama, Drew Pearce, Hospital, Jeff Goldblum, Jodie Foster, Review, Sofia Boutella, Sterling K. Brown, Thriller

D: Drew Pearce / 94m

Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Charlie Day, Dave Bautista, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Brian Tyree Henry

In the US in 2028, water has become a precious, but privatised commodity. When punitive restrictions are put in place by the company that controls the water supply, a riot breaks out that sweeps through Los Angeles. Using the riot as a cover, brothers Sherman (Brown) and Lev (Henry), plus two accomplices, plan to rob the vault of an up-market bank. Their plan backfires, and during their escape, Sherman and Lev are wounded by the police, Lev quite seriously. They manage to get to the Hotel Artemis, a kind of field hospital for criminals, where they are safe from the police, and thanks to the rules, any other criminals who might be there. Run by Nurse (Foster), with assistance from “health care professional” Everest (Bautista), the Artemis offers anonymity in the form of code names based around the room(s) they stay in. With female assassin Nice (Boutella) and loud-mouthed arms dealer Acapulco (Day) already there, Sherman begins to wonder just how safe he and his brother are going to be, especially when Nurse lets in a wounded police officer (Slate) – otherwise a strict no-no – and word reaches them that local crime boss, and founder of the Artemis, the Wolf (Goldblum) is on his way, and in need of medical attention…

Let’s get the obvious comparison out of the way: the Hotel Artemis is the medical facility version of the Continental Hotel in the John Wick movies. But that’s as far as the comparison goes, because in the self-assured hands of writer/director Drew Pearce, Hotel Artemis is a tribute to an era gone by, a high-tech yet nostalgic shout out to a time when honour amongst thieves actually meant something. By pitching the movie ten years on, Pearce is able to draw a distinction between the growing feudal state of affairs outside the hotel, and the semblance of order that Nurse feels compelled to uphold within the hotel’s walls and its rooms. It’s meant to be a neutral base for everyone, but machinations and plotting abound, and it’s not long before alliances are being forged, threats are being backed up, and an escalating sense of impending violence is allowed to bear fruit. The sense of an era coming to an end, imploding in on itself, is highlighted by the encroaching riot, and the swift descent of the hotel “guests” into murderous anarchy. There are rules, but once they begin to be broken, there’s no difference between inside and outside.

Pearce handles all this with a downplayed sense of fun, casting cruel aspersions on the morality of his characters – even the “good guys” do some unpalatable things in this movie – and by making sure everyone suffers to one degree or another. The humour is pitch black at times, but plays in support to the drama rather than overwhelming it, and Pearce draws out strong perfprmances from his cast, with Foster reminding us just how good an actress she is, while Brown continues his rise to the A-list, and Boutella exudes a silky menace that is captivating and unpleasant at the same time. Some things, however, are less successful. Slate’s wounded police officer awkwardly provides Nurse with a back story that feels forced and unnecessary, and Day’s obnoxious, sexist arms dealer seems like a throwback to the Nineties. But the real MVP of the movie is the Artemis itself, a triumph of cinematography, lighting, production design, art direction and set decoration that reflects the tired glory of the premises through the faded glamour of its hallways and rooms. It’s the perfect setting in which to record the end of an era…

Rating: 8/10 – flecked with nostalgia and a wistful harking back to simpler times, Hotel Artemis is a violent crime thriller that has a surprising amount of heart, and which tells its story with a welcome measure of simplicity; boosted by the detailed backdrop of the hotel itself, it’s a welcome entry into a sub-genre of crime drama that has slowly been cannabalising itself for far too long.

The Mummy (2017)

13 Tuesday Jun 2017

Posted by dullwood68 in Movies

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Action, Adventure, Alex Kurtzman, Annabelle Wallis, Dark Universe, Drama, Jake Johnson, Reboot, Review, Russell Crowe, Sofia Boutella, Tom Cruise, Universal

D: Alex Kurtzman / 110m

Cast: Tom Cruise, Annabelle Wallis, Sofia Boutella, Russell Crowe, Jake Johnson, Courtney B. Vance, Marwan Kenzari

The first in Universal’s Dark Universe series of movies featuring all the old horror villains from the Thirties and Forties – Dracula Untold (2014) can be ignored – The Mummy arrives with all the hoopla and advertising overkill of a movie designed to put as many bums on seats in its first week before audiences realise just how much they’ve been duped into thinking it might be any good. There were clues in the trailers, but nothing as bad as the finished product, a dispiriting mishmash of better ideas already well executed elsewhere, and lesser ideas propped up by a script that needed three screenwriters to work on it. If this is an example of what we can “look forward” to, then it would be best if Universal gave up now and saved us all the pain and anguish of further entries.

The main problem with The Mummy is that it’s clearly not a horror movie, and it’s just as obvious that at no point have Universal ever considered making it into one. Rebooting those movies from seventy, eighty years ago isn’t such a bad idea, but at least those outings for Dracula and Frankenstein’s Monster and the Wolf Man were meant to be horror movies. This is a bloodless, scare-free action adventure movie that pays lip service to its series tagline “Welcome to a world of gods and monsters”, and relies on big CGI-enhanced action set pieces to provide what little entertainment it can muster. Somehow, the big studios have decided that these big set pieces are what audiences want, but that’s just wishful thinking. What audiences want are stories that make sense, characters they can relate to or sympathise with, moments that make them sit up and take notice, or any combination of all three. What audiences don’t want is to be force fed the same tired, formulaic rubbish over and over.

The Mummy arrives at a point in the year where the annual blockbuster season is well under way, but there’s very little chance that this is going to be as successful as Universal may have hoped. The presence of Tom Cruise (in another franchise role) would normally help sell a movie, but here he’s playing the same kind of cocky, rule-breaking maverick that he’s been playing for the last thirty years. As a result, his character, a US army sergeant called Nick Morton with a sideline in stealing antiquities, looks and feels tired right from the start, and Cruise is unable to inject more than a basic energy into his performance. He’s not helped by the script, which requires him to look puzzled, confused, bewildered and all the way back to puzzled with each and every scene once Sofia Boutella’s evil Egyptian princess, Ahmanet, is freed from her ancient prison.

Away from the action and the garbled storyline, it falls to Crowe’s role as Dr Henry Jekyll, head of the Prestigium (“We recognize, examine, contain, destroy.”), to provide a link to any future Dark Universe movies. But instead of keeping Dr Jekyll in the forefront, and Mr Hyde under wraps until a potential solo movie, The Mummy takes a detour around the halfway mark and reveals Hyde in all his ashen-faced, grumpy glory, and with a horrible Cockney accent to boot. It’s a prime example of the makers not knowing how to maintain a consistent tone. There’s much more that doesn’t make sense, or feels as if it wasn’t fully explored or worked out ahead of shooting, but the movie doesn’t concern itself with telling a coherent story, or treating its audience with respect. This is a big, dumb action movie with mild horror moments that are about as scary as watching Sesame Street. The next in the series is meant to be Bride of Frankenstein (2019), with Bill Condon in the director’s chair. Let’s hope – if the movie goes ahead as planned – that he has better luck than Alex Kurtzman in creating a world where gods and monsters really do have an impact that goes beyond massive indifference, or exacting criticism.

Rating: 3/10 – meh, meh, meh; the movie equivalent of oxygen – colourless and odourless – The Mummy is yet another abject blockbuster lacking a heart, a soul, and a sense of its own stupidity, and is a waste of its cast and crew’s time and effort – with the same going for its audience as well.