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.

As I watched this, I'm reading the screenplay in my mind, and my eyes and mind popped. Great writing, great conversion from paper to print to film.

Danny Devito, early years you'd think from the setting, tells the tale.

But actually, I'm watching the 2016 re-release, aptly re-named Sin City. The original film, Hotel Noire, apparently 2012. Yet it seems to be 1940 something.

The cast expands, marvelously. Rosario Dawson. Kevin Connolly. Michael B. Jordan.

Malin Åkerman. Mandy Moore and Cameron Richardson, Rufus Sewell. Haven't researched it yet, but would love to know the House and team, including the screenwriter that wrote this.

Kudos.

Couldn't disagree more with the other reviewer.

While this might not be the greatest Film Noir flick ever made or have very strong character development it was pretty entertaining with a well told story and great cast. While story develops slowly it never felt boring or artificial.

Reminded me a bit of 2013 Mob City so if you saw it and liked it, you will probably enjoy City of Sin.

Not sure what else I can say without spoilers. I would however recommend watching it if you like film noirs outside of Frank Miller cinematizations.

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.