Hotel Noir - Showdown im Morgengrauen

Silly, funny, dark humor film. Many twists and turns. Outrageous events. Probably underrated.

The Plot.

A hardened detective lays low in a darkened downtown Los Angeles hotel room, biding his time as he patiently awaits a gang of vengeful hit men that are on his tail.

Throughout the course of this one fateful night the detective becomes entangled in a web of girls, guns, and money, as he enlists the help of the many intriguing hotel guests that he encounters in an effort to evade the grave fate that lies in store.

Wow. Written like a bad stage play.

Directed like a HS effort.

And acted like they can't get out of a paper bag.

It's horrible.

For the first 35 minutes i thought this was a parody/ comedy. It's not.

It's just a disaster.

AKA City of Sin. Another one of those Dollar Tree buys that most likely be viewed on slow evening. Of course, it doesn't help that you know the outcome from the very beginning, and that makes sitting through the film a chore.

I watched this carefully and noted the comments from other reviewers, and I wanted to find something to disagree with them so I could offer a more balanced opinion. I think it's important to have a wide variety of opinions from different people so that you are left with a much more accurate impression of what the movie is about.

However I failed, there's no saving graces, it's rubbish. It is in fact an anachronism and I suspect Danny DeVito signed up to it as he simply doesn't get parts anymore so he'll grasp at anything. More than likely Malin Ackerman did the same, she realises she's out in the cold and wants to come back in but can't grasp that she can't act. Robert Forster is the only saving grace of this film, he's consistently excellent and believable but his role was so small that he did nothing to lift the movie.

Don't waste you time, I'd rather do housework than watch it again.

I came to IMDb looking for a review to decide on whether to watch this and there wasn't one so I let that decide in the movie's favor as I figured to write one for it.

I liked it. Any movie with the word 'noir' in the title has work to do to avoid the clichés that the genre forces it to reference. The characters have to be one-dimensional and fit the molds. The dialog has to be clipped and clever. Yet this movie is homage to noir as well as being a fun yarn in its own right.

It's stylish and stylized with narration and inner monologues from multiple characters. There's flashbacks and story tangents from all the main characters, that stand on their own as but also get sewn together by the end. It's black and white but you stop noticing that early on because the medium matches the tone of the movie so well.

If you're in the mood for light story-telling that's well thought out then Hotel Noir is a fine place to spend an evening.