New Rose Hotel

Abel Ferrara found himself in a MacGyver situation: to improvise a cyberpunk film with a) several very good actors, b) a camcorder, c) an impressive but extremely short and sketchy story by William Gibson, d) futuristic props consisting entirely of a PDA (google it, kids) and a half-bitten circuit board, and e) $600 bucks for expenses.

This is all conjecture on my part, based on nothing more than having seen New Rose Hotel. Can you blame me? After hacking off all the stylistic coir, the story is as such: it's the Future. The most profitable form of industrial espionage is stealing human talent. Two threadbare hijack artists, played by Walken and Dafoe, will lure a brilliant scientist named Hiroshi from Evil Megacorp to Mega Evilcorp. They will use a magnetic temptress that they pick from a squirming Shinjuku flesh pit based on her skill at fellating a karaoke mic.

Asia Argento is the girl – the actress has, the rarity of rarities! not only sex appeal but enough charisma and acting ability to work the part. Unfortunately, the singing is bad, and the songs are bad, and the sexy bar where they are performed is not very sexy at all. While we're at it, the future is not all that futuristic. The sex, of which there is plenty, is made up of cuts, quick pans and motion blur. The seduction and abduction of Hiroshi is talked about exhaustively, but would have been pedestrian even if it didn't entirely take place off-camera.

In brief, the amount of abstraction and suspension required to enjoy – if I may use such a bold term – "New Rose Hotel" hangs some serious lifting on the viewer. Discounting the bland nudity, the only distinct pleasure is watching Christopher Walken's line delivery. The one other actor who gets to do anything of note is his partner in crime, Willem Dafoe; unfortunately, his arc comes down to getting warned severely against falling in love with Argento's character, then falling in love with her like a man taking a headfirst dive on a concrete slab.

Some people have called this movie confusing, but they are dumb. The plot is crystal clear. It's simple as a triangle. Others have called it a boring, flickering mess, which is a much harder charge to beat. You know those "reveal" montages where the main character figures out the horrible secret? They're all made up the same way, with ominous music getting louder in the background, snippets of flashback picked half-second at a time from various parts of the movie, and key lines of dialogue played over and over, with an echo effect added on top.

The entire movie plays like one of those. A relatively simple story is packed inside a fifteen-layered rebus of headache, eyestrain and tinnitus as you squint to figure out what's on screen. If this is how the regular narrative plays, then as a parting fillip, the entire last half hour of the movie is made up of an actual flashback montage as one of the characters, soon to be found and killed by his enemies, is reliving past mistakes and pleasures in a dinky hotel room.

Some have complained about this sequence because it goes on for about 20 minutes after even the densest of us have figured out every plot secret. I think they're missing the point – the scene isn't a reveal, but the fevered, looping memories of a man who's about to kick off the chair. As such, it has a good deal of pathos. However, in the end, it's not really all that interesting, good-looking or original. And way, way too long.

The central question of New Rose Hotel is as follows: is there any reason at all to watch this dizzy 90-minute montage, when you could read the original short story in 15 minutes? None, actually. Unless you are enough of a stim addict to prefer watching any sort of dull video to reading any kind of engaging prose.

After reading a number of reviews at imdb--and elsewhere--I have to come-down-on-the-side of the director, Abel Ferrera's

vision. This is a GREAT science-fiction film, and for those who are

generally-disappointed with it, I have to ask whether they

understand what sci-fi IS. If science-fiction isn't about the present

(as-filtered through an imagined-future), it generally isn't good, but

New Rose Hotel fits this criteria. This is a pretty-old story from the

80s that Gibson had published in "Omni Magazine," it might-have

been his first-acceptance. While it is a minor-story, it has

dramatic-elements to it that are very-pleasing within-the-structure

of the "Ferrera" universe: a metropolitan-dystopia, urban and

moral-decay, the eternal quest by many for "power," official- corruption, the consequences of murder, sexuality, drugs, how

memory works, they all mesh-well with Ferrera's thematic-styles.

There are no great moral-lessons here, this is about the aftermath

of that paradigm. The only-complaint I have is that the future has

caught-up a bit, due to the age of the original-story. With our

human-society growing more-restrictive, with the rise of corporate- statism, and the subsequent-decline of the Nation State, New

Rose Hotel seems almost "quaint." That should give-us-pause.

New Rose Hotel is based on the short story of the same name by William Gibson. While the film is supposed to be set in the tech infested world of Gibson's stories it fails to convey this feeling, with only a few pieces of technology presented visually. More importantly, however, the film is terribly written and directed. It seems obvious that Gibson's story should have been followed in a more literal manner, as the story finds the narrator (Dafoe's character) reminiscing in his coffin in the New Rose Hotel, talking to Sandii as though she can hear him. Instead, we are subjected to the story twice, the second time around in the form of flashbacks. I imagine the flashbacks are supposed to clarify the disorganized mess that Ferrara weaves in the first half of the film. Perhaps the film appeals to the art crowd, but don't let them fool you. It's a terrible movie, putting to waste the incredible talents of Walken and Dafoe. Gibson's writing is densely descriptive and gritty. Ferrara attempts for the grit, but Gibson's worlds can't be created without a budget [and a competent director would help]. For example: Kill Switch, an episode of The X-Files that Gibson wrote, was the most expensive episode ever filmed during the time the show was filmed in Vancouver. And it's one of the best episodes in the show's history. Why? Because it constructed the visual aspect necessary to tell the story. The fact that New Rose Hotel fails to do this, coupled with Ferrara's horrendous storytelling, is what makes it an unworthy effort. If you're a fan of Gibson, then watch the film, but I doubt you'll enjoy it.

New Rose Hotel captures the bleakness and despair of the short story that seems common to William Gibson's writing. I enjoyed the performances of Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe and the babe was sufficiently babeish to hold my interest though her acting was just OK. The movie peaked too soon and the flashbacks to the film's beginning were too long and repetitious. The short story didn't have enough depth to fill out the movie. William Gibson is heavy on description and atmosphere, a master at it. "Neuromancer", his best book, is enthralling even if you don't know what is happening. The screenplay for the movie should have been padded out more in the beginning maybe showing some history of X and some of the babe's motivations clearer. The story was somewhat obscure. If you didn't listen carefully you missed the plot. The movie was flawed but atmospheric and moody enough to be of interest. William Gibson's fans should see it to see how the book's mood was captured.

With a solid plot basis (William Gibson short story), two excellent actors (Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe) and an interesting director (Abel Ferrara) this movie could have well turned out to be a real hidden gem. Dario Argento's daughter posing as the female lead doesn't have any other qualification for her role than an Italian accent and a nice body -- no screen presence, no femme fatale charisma, no "edge" -- and the budget has obviously been someone's lunch money for a week, but those things alone would not have done too much damage. However, there are some bigger issues with this film.

In the beginning of the movie there's way too much singing in the bars, and it's all bad. I've been to karaoke bars where the performers have been significantly more talented. All of them. No kidding. And near the end the movie falls apart, mainly thanks to way too many flashbacks -- they are not of just one or two key scenes, but of umpteen, in a peculiar "here's the movie again in case you missed it" fashion. They are annoying as such, and as a result you probably lose your focus and, consequently, your grasp of the plot. What you end up having instead of a real movie is a 90 minutes long artsy collection of insubstantial sleazy moving pictures with nudity.

In short, the first half of the movie does not get your hopes up too high, yet the latter half is disappointing. Kind of an achievement, I suppose. For better or worse, Walken's cool charisma and Argento's numerous nude scenes may still keep you awake through the whole thing. 4/10