Hotel Noir

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.

"Are you a cop? Why? You ask questions like a cop. How's that? Like you're not really interested in the answer, but the way I answer. I'm a cop. No kidding. You're on a stakeout? I was gonna hop a train. Changed your mind? Missed my train."

"Hotel Noir" takes place in the infamous 50s. The years of glitter and glamour with its jazzy mood. When men walked around like Humphrey Bogart and every woman seemed to be a diva. Those were the days that lightning a cigarette wasn't associated with a deadly disease, but with fun and sensuality. The time in which a microphone looked like a significantly over-sized toaster and women wore bras as if sophisticated cruise missiles were hidden in it. The same wigwam-shaped things Madonna became famous with, many years later. Men and women had conversation as if they were performing in a stage play with rapid dialogue lines which sounded shrewd and ingenious. It was the Charleston time and the time the mafia ruled with Dick Tracy-like gangsters.

Unfortunately this rather old-fashioned-feeling film reminded me of the dull theater shows I had to watch when I went to high school. At the beginning I still had this hopeful thought that this could be a pretty entertaining movie. And this because of the fact that they managed to convince a few well-known actors to cooperate, such as Dany Devito, Rufus "I'll follow you down" Sewell, Rosario "Trance" Dawson and Carla "San Andreas" Gugino. But despite the well-known cast, the film felt like a third-rate detective novel in which the relationships between the protagonists revealed themselves painfully slow. And the stories are intertwined such as the spaghetti in a Spaghetti Bolognaise.

And that's also the biggest drawback of this film. The complexity and quantity of twists made it a really hard to follow film. It all feels cheap and minimalistic as well. Both in terms of story as scenography. I bet the limited budget, this movie was made with, probably has something to do with that. And it's not really intriguing or exciting at all. The conversation between Felix (Rufus Sewell) and Hanna Click (Carla Gugino) is the most fascinating part of the whole movie. A series of short questions and answers the two protagonists are shooting at each other. Amazingly shrewd sometimes. But ultimately it's still nothing more than a colorless film, trying to emulate a similar film from a successful era in film history. A game of Cluedo was more exciting in those days.

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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

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