Hotel Artemis (2018)
Directed by Drew Pearce
Los Angeles, June 21st, 2028. While the streets are being torn apart by riots, the Nurse, who runs a clandestine hospital for criminals in the penthouse of the Artemis, a closed old hotel, has a rough night dealing with troublemaker clients: thieves, assassins, someone from the past and the one who owns the place and the whole city.
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What critics say influenced Hotel Artemis
"Hotel Artemis" wants to be a trendy crime-action film, in the vein of recent trendy crime-action films like "John Wick."
There’s a John Wick hotel vibe to the place reflected in the lengthy list of rules which include warnings to not abuse the staff or attack fellow patients.
Unlike recent action standouts like John Wick or Atomic Blonde , Hotel Artemis spends as much time setting up emotional payoffs as it does action setpieces, which is unfortunate when the film seems to promise a finale much more climactic than the one it actually reaches.
Before seeing writer/director Drew Pearce's (writer "Iron Man 3") feature directorial debut, I thought it sounded an awful lot like "John Wick" with its secret hotel for criminals.
Surrounded by the largest riot the city has ever seen in 2028, this art-deco hotel feels like a combination of Barton Fink’s Hotel Earle and the assassin refuge from John Wick, the Continental.
It's kind of a fun idea – a bit of a riff on the Continental Hotel of the "John Wick" series, and other audiences may see similarities to "Smokin' Aces" (2006) — and for some audiences, its hits will be able to offset its misses.
The film isn’t a fetish object that exists, like Duncan Jones’s Mute , to indulge in the signifiers of the future popularized by Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner .
With a catchy name and a stacked cast of genre favorites, it doesn’t take much to sell Hotel Artemis as a concept: a not-too-distant future, a secret hospital for criminals drenched in a sort of neo-Art Nouveau aesthetic that feels almost Blade Runner in nature.
It may not be the dystopian future previously seen in Blade Runner but there’s something about this film and LA.
The vibe seems like a cross between early “Blade Runner” and rehashed “John Wick.”
Given the setting, thoughts of Blade Runner are inevitable, but with its ghostly, labyrinthine realm of dimly lighted hallways, Hotel Artemis is more reminiscent of key locations in the L.A.-set Drive (a film that was also scored by Martinez).
In fact, like Blade Runner before it, it is merely taking its cues from the grungy Art Deco bones of the downtown Los Angeles in which it takes place.
Hotel Artemis maintains interest, if not investment, for those predisposed to the urban doom and gloom of films such as Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, John Wick (whose ?“hotel for criminals” concept could have been the spark here), Judge Dredd and, just a theory, 1932’s Grand Hotel.
Rest assured, to describe it merely as a knockoff of that movie is to do it a bit of a disservice because it borrows from a number of different sources, ranging from “ The Purge ” to large chunks of the filmographies of John Carpenter and Walter Hill to, oddly enough, “Grand Hotel.”
It has the dystopian futuristic feel of "Escape From New York" and "The Road Warrior" movies.
Hotel Artemis maintains interest, if not investment, for those predisposed to the urban doom and gloom of films such as Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, John Wick (whose ?“hotel for criminals” concept could have been the spark here), Judge Dredd and, just a theory, 1932’s Grand Hotel.
Presumably Pearce was after a giddy John Carpenter vibe, something along the lines of “Escape from New York.”
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The whole thing rather reminded me of similar stripped-down thrillers from the ‘70s and ‘80s, films like John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and Sam Firstenberg’s Avenging Force, and to my mind this is a giant positive.
Hotel Artemis riffs on John Wick, but also of the cheese and violence-filled, celebrity-packed films of the mid-2000s, like Identity or Smokin’ Aces.
It's kind of a fun idea – a bit of a riff on the Continental Hotel of the "John Wick" series, and other audiences may see similarities to "Smokin' Aces" (2006) — and for some audiences, its hits will be able to offset its misses.
It recalls Joe Carnahan's "Smokin' Aces," another would-be hip, violent action film that puffed out its chest and thought it was way more awesome than it really was.
But other efforts to coalesce colorful ensembles into multi-pronged action set pieces — Joe Carnahan’s Smokin’ Aces, for example, or even Bruce Willis’ misbegotten Hudson Hawk — more often than not fell into incoherence.
Whereas a lean, mean post-heist standoff would have been enough for most movies (certainly, Quentin Tarantino launched his directing career with an inventive spin on just that in “Reservoir Dogs”), Pearce overloads “Hotel Artemis” with all sorts of extraneous conflict, most of it centered on the arrival of an ominous figure known as the Wolf King.
This claustrophobic, Reservoir Dogs-inspired sensibility allows Pearce the opportunity to give real character to the sets, and he opts for a stylish, delectably playful look and feel that’s reminiscent of old Hollywood in an impressive way.
I mean, this is a movie that showcases the haunting 1960’s hit “California Dreamin’ ” by the the Mamas & the Papas — and also crowns its villain “The Wolf King,” which was the title of the first solo album by Mamas & the Papas frontman John Phillips, one of the most despicable monsters imaginable if the allegations by his daughter Mackenzie were true.
From the cutesy codenames, to the cheesy needle-drops (seriously, there’s a literal needle-drop as “California Dreamin’” is piped through the speakers while Nurse makes her rounds, complete with the record sleeve tucked into frame in case you forget what song is playing), Hotel Artemis giddily runs with all its genre pastiche.
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Hotel Artemis maintains interest, if not investment, for those predisposed to the urban doom and gloom of films such as Escape from New York, Assault on Precinct 13, John Wick (whose ?“hotel for criminals” concept could have been the spark here), Judge Dredd and, just a theory, 1932’s Grand Hotel.
The whole thing rather reminded me of similar stripped-down thrillers from the ‘70s and ‘80s, films like John Carpenter’s Assault on Precinct 13 and Sam Firstenberg’s Avenging Force, and to my mind this is a giant positive.
The directorial debut of Drew Pearce, who previously worked on the scripts for Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation , Hotel Artemis has enough derivative concepts (think John Wick ’s Continental in the world of The Purge sequels ), sci-fi ideas, and characters to keep the movie zipping from room to room before the inevitable showdown.
Certain aspects of Hotel Artemis bring to mind recent genre movies like John Wick and The Purge , but for the most part their similarities are surface-level only.
The script from writer Drew Pearce (“Iron Man 3”), who also directs, begins almost like something from the world of the “The Purge” franchise.
Rest assured, to describe it merely as a knockoff of that movie is to do it a bit of a disservice because it borrows from a number of different sources, ranging from “ The Purge ” to large chunks of the filmographies of John Carpenter and Walter Hill to, oddly enough, “Grand Hotel.”