Hotel Noir

This was a god awful endless snooze.

It starts out with Danny talking bout his life as shower door salesman,and how one good looking women came on to him once. Fron there it's just a bumpy downhill ride,with endless monologues and dialogues that never really manged to lift the movie,nor keep you awake.

It tries to be this really clever film noir,but you are neither entertained by nor interested in any of the characters nor their faith. You just want it to end.

I have never given Malin ackerman all that much thought as anything else than eye candy,so far she hasn't disappointed me yet.Her and Carla Gugino mostly work as eye candy and some lame sort of femme fatale, to draw people to the movie by name association .

In short stay away from this

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.

Los Angeles, late 50s. Police detective Rufus Sewell ('Dark City') steals a suitcase full of money from a group of robbers who just did a successful heist. He holes up in a hotel room while trying to think of his next move. In the course of the night he comes into contact with a string of people including shower door installer Danny DeVito ('L.A. Confidential'), nightclub singer Carla Gugino ('Sin City') and cleaning lady Rosario Dawson ('Sin City'), and as the movie progresses, all the links between the various characters become clearer and tighter.

Written and directed by Sebastian Gutierrez ('Gothika', 'Judas Kiss') this neo-noir somehow went under the radar and wasn't even theatrically released?! The cast above is well-known as is, but it also includes other well-known faces like Robert Forster ('Mulholland Drive') and Kevin Connolly ('Entourage')... In any case, it's a shame as this is clearly a labor of love. The movie plays out in a non-linear fashion with a lot of flashbacks, voice- over narration (by different persons) and people telling their side of things so gradually more and more information is revealed and how each person fits into the overall story. It's a neo-noir through and through, but it also stands out in many ways. Filmed in gorgeous black & white the movie starts off focusing on DeVito, before turning to Sewell... or is it really Gugino's story? Or someone else's? Because of the way it is told, paying attention is required, as well as sticking with it... Things are fairly slow at first because all the characters need to be introduced somehow, including some which do seem a bit redundant and don't add a lot to the end result. But as the pace of revealing information increases, so does the movie's level. It's not a perfect movie by any means, but a fairly unique neo-noir all the same and well worth watching. 7/10

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.

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.