**** out *****

4 outta 5

Hotel Artemis features some big stars and some big monologues and some big violence with lots of style.  It’s a nicely inventive hybrid mashup of sci-fi, siege movie, multiple character drama, ‘50s noir throwback with a super-sounds of the ‘70s infused soundtrack.   There is so much stuff crammed in here some of it goes by so quickly it barely makes an impact.  This is less about in depth character analysis than a stylistic exercise that ends in a satisfyingly messy cavalcade of violence.

10 years in the future in L.A. at the Hotel Artemis, a nurse (Jodie Foster) fixes up criminals who have a membership at her elite, hidden hospital.   Her sidekick is the big, burly health care professional nicknamed Everest (Dave Bautista).  In her hotel are guests who get named after the rooms they’re staying in, the deadly assassin Nice (Sophia Boutella), the bank robber Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown) and his injured brother, Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry) and the jerky arms dealer Acapulco (Charlie Day).  One night during a particularly nasty riot, a cop named Morgan (Jenny Slate) falls at the door and the nurse is compelled to save her.   Complicating matters is the arrival of the hotel’s owner, the Wolf King (Jeff Goldblum), who is in dire need of medical assistance and is being watched by his hotheaded, killer son, Crosby (Zachary Quinto).  As the riots get closer, deadly intentions may cause everything to ignite. 

Foster’s nurse swings from barking orders or being petrified of going outside.   There’s also a moment when she gets alone with the Red King and Foster slowly turns from being amicable into something scarier as she pumps him up full of drugs for information.  The history with the nurse and Jenny Slate’s Morgan is so briefly sketched out that it’s hard to care about the relationship between the two. Some fuzzy shots of a kid from the nurse’s past are supposed to build sympathy but seem kind of cheesy. 

The main reason the nurse is so compelling is almost entirely due to Foster’s performance which is whip-smart, sassy and really enjoyable.  The snappy back and forth she has with her gigantic partner is consistently genius as Bautista does a soft spoken ass kicker so very well.   Some of the movies funniest moments are simply his annoyance with the nurse’s passive aggressive put downs and him dealing with uncooperative arrivals.  Probably his biggest badass moment is when Crosby and his gaggle of crooks are trying to break in and Everest howls “Visiting hours are never!”

Brown’s bank robber is one job from getting out of the game but his dumb brother keeps dragging him back into it and Brown decently plays the cliché of a criminal with heart.  Henry as the no good brother doesn’t seem to be worth the hassle, frankly.   Even though Charlie Day yelling loudly and angrily has been done before, its fun to see him go total full psycho jerk and his exit from the movie is nicely messy.  Boutella has also done the stone cold killer thing in previous films but seeing her do it is still enjoyable.

Having put in so many very weird performances Jeff Goldblum is almost becoming a parody of weirdness but here he actually tones it down a bit.  Not a lot, he’s still oddball and has a crazy stilted delivery, but he drops some genuine moments where he seems deadly and unpredictable.  He isn’t likable, which is good because Goldblum is generally likable, so making him a villain is quite a feat.  Quinto playing his whiny and psychotic son has some great, nasty moments like when he tells a henchman to double-tap some unconscious cops.  The henchman protests slightly and Quinto snarls “Do you want to get into Heaven or do you want to get the Wolf King angry?”  Quntio is basically doing a slightly whinier version of Sylar from Heroes with a mustache but that’s fine.

There is some decent action but most of it is saved towards the very end, which is okay because the movie is kind of short so it can back load it with the smashing.   Most of the earlier bouts of violence are simply really quick, like when Nice is showing off that she can be rapidly deadly without anyone knowing.  There’s an opening bank robbery that nicely demonstrates how insanely crazy the rioting is and how brutal the police can be.  Writer/director Drew Pearce in his first feature film has a nice visual flair that makes the confined setting seem to have an epic scope.  Pearce has more than a few quipping screenplays under his belt and he supplies lots of fun dialogue here, like when Honolulu asks his brother if he has a plan and Waikiki says he doesn’t have a plan but “I have a gun.”

Hotel Artemis is a very breezy movie that takes more than a few genre influences and sticks it in a blender.  It doesn’t really have any thematic depth but everyone looks sort of cool and does cool things.  And it has a very unlikely, small lady hero at the centre.  It is an offbeat film and the weirder and bloodier it gets, the more entertaining the chaos becomes.