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New Rose HotelRating:
Release Date: 14 December, 1999 Retail Price: $29.98 OUR Price: $26.99 You SAVE: $2.99! Cast: Complete Cast (11 total) |
New Rose Hotel Reviews
New Rose Hotel sinks into ridiculously silly bore
Christopher Walken (Suicide Kings, King Of New York) wants Asia Argento (Scarlet Diva, Land Of The Dead) to seduced brilliant geneticist so that he can switch firms. Willem Dafoe (The Clearing, Shadow of the Vampire) is Walken's partner and is in deep love with Argento and as we go threw the story it gets really boring and eventually in the process of seducing the guy, Argento goes missing, she vanishes, but where does she go? Dafoe ends up flashing back, remembering, thinking, maybe, was it him that Walken and Argento were messing with or whatever...the flashback segment goes on and on and we are rendered bored watching this poor sap try to puzzle the pieces together and when it comes to the end you dont care about any of the characters. The part where I laughed the most was when Walken was through off to his death...I think he yelled "Wow!" really loud and all I saw was him fall and go splat...even when he gets killed, Walken is still the funny man. Also starring Annabella Sciorra (Jungle Fever, Underworld (1997) and Gretchen Mol (The Thirteenth Floor, Forever Mine), both are barely in this movie and are wasted. Probably one of Abel Ferrara's worst. This was released in 1999 but shot in 1997.
New York Grit goes Cyberpunk (sort of)
The gritty back-alley path of writer and director Abel Ferrara's career so far seems to be his fervent desire to bring his tales of urban blight and plight to vividly disturbing life on the independent film screen. At times he has succeeded with glorious malignance (King of New York, Bad Lieutenant, The Funeral) and other times he sinks in the self-indulgent mire of his own philosophical and often violent musings on the contemporary urban habitat (The Addiction, The Blackout, Dangerous Game). With New Rose Hotel, Ferrara attempts to take his vision in a somewhat atypical direction by delving into the world of cyberpunk. He does this by tapping into the resources of cyberpunk forefather William Gibson, adapting New Rose Hotel from Gibson's seminal short story collection, Burning Chrome.
Fox (Ferrara regular Christopher Walken doing his Christopher Walken thing) and X (Willem Dafoe) trade in international espionage. They are going to use an alluring prostitute named Sandii (the enigmatic Asia Argento) to seduce a world-renowned techie, and make sure she convinces him to defect from his present biotech employer to a rival company. For accomplishing this task, the Fox and X will receive 100 million dollars. But while navigating this perilous trail, mistakes are made, people end up dead, and the two men become bounty.
Cyberpunk has been splashed across the movie screens a handful of times for the past several years, often successfully (The Matrix) and often not quite so successfully (Johnny Mnemonic). Of course, Mnemonic was also an adaptation from Burning Chrome, a stupefying and inane translation that reeked of filmmakers who did not have a grasp on Gibson's imagination and intentions, or the cyberpunk genre in general. It seemed they wanted to make a "hip" effects-laden sci-fi film and only managed to alienate Gibson-loyal viewers who rightfully barraged Mnemonic with contempt (Johnny Moronic, anyone?).
Such should not be the fate of the low key New Rose Hotel. No, it is not a great film, it might be classifiable as passable, but overall, an imaginative and fairly absorbing beginning deteriorates into an anti-climatic and pointless final act. Ferrara and co-screenwriter Christ Zois certainly understand cyberpunk and Gibson specifically, but their translation of New Rose Hotel is rambling and muddled. Of course, this can prove a problem whenever anyone is trying to turn a thirteen-page story in a ninety-minute film. A certain amount of freedom for expansion is required. But, with New Rose Hotel, there does not seem to be an expansion on the story (okay, there's dialogue in the film, unlike the story), but rather a staunch, almost literal translation. The events of the film are set in motion in a linear fashion, refashioned from the jagged first person recollections of the short story. This lasts for perhaps the first hour of the film, culminating with Dafoe's character holing up in the New Rose Hotel. Then, Ferrara tells the story... again. But this time he tells it as Gibson wrote it in Burning Chrome, using flashbacks of previously viewed scenes interspersed with X realizing how he blew the deal, grasping his delusions about life and love, and longing for Sandii. This provides no new revelations, and does little to further the film. And this is the point when a degree of tedium sets in and the viewer might very well blurt out, "We know, we know. Been there, done that." This is frustrating because, hell, Ferrara could have made a solid and engaging twenty-minute short film to tell a story he tells twice in ninety minutes.
John Lurie (Down by Law, Oz) and Annabella Sciorra (The Addiction, The Sopranos) make cameo appearances in the beginning, at a murky nightclub, and longtime Ferrara regular Victor Argo appears later in the film. Gretchen Mol (who was also in The Funeral) is peppered throughout, without much to do or say. Her character is pivotal but her role is negligible. Ken Kelsch provides some interesting cinematography, hazy and wobbly, sometimes hallucinatory, and generally providing a futuristic feel. But it is not enough to allay viewer apathy about a story that unravels and comes to a shrug-worthy close.
Cyberpunk is not about cool effects and big guns and slow motion bullets, no matter what viewers took away from the Matrix (a good movie, sure, but not the pinnacle nor the point of cyberpunk). Insofar as fleshed-out characters with truly human qualities and their interactions with technology and futuristic bureaucracy, Ferrara gets it. But his technique, mainly in the writing, unfortunately lacks. Ferrara is always a ballsy and interesting director, for better or worse. For the Ferrara neophyte, the top recommendations would be King of New York and The Funeral. For the Gibson neophyte, start with Burning Chrome, and then move immediately to the all-time cyberpunk classic, the brilliant Neuromancer. And for those familiar with Gibson, the question may be raised, "Is it better than Johnny Mnemonic?" Well, sure, of course. But saying New Rose Hotel is better than Johnny Mnemonic isn't really saying much.
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