We Agree: Hotel Artemis

 2018, Drew Pearce (All Hail the King) -- download/Netflix

I started watching my download of this sometime in 2019, but then something interrupted me and I never got back to it. And then 2020 interrupted me and I never got back to it. And then it showed up on Netflix and I went, "Oh yeah, this looked liked a lot of fun..." so I got back to it.

The premise is right down my alley -- a 20 Minutes Into the Future dystopia featuring a high-tech (if somewhat run-down) hotel converted into a hospital & hospice for the criminally wealthy. If you can afford to buy your way into the fortified place, then they will do their best to heal you and protect you while you are recovering. Think of it like the Continental from John Wick but they have fancy medical equipment operated by a run-down nurse (Jodie Foster, Elysium) and her orderly Everest (Dave Bautista, Guardians of the Galaxy). My head canon is that this IS the John Wick universe, just after it has gone through some upheaval.

One night while most of LA riots over the draconic control of water, a pair of bank robbers (Sterling K Brown, Person of Interest & Brian Tyree Henry, Widows) show up. They are assigned the Hawaii room, becoming Waikiki and Honolulu respectively. Each guest is assigned a room alias, to protect their identities. The problem is that Honolulu, on his way out of the bank, grabbed a pen out of the pocket of an obvious mook. "You don't want to do that," says the mook. He also gets shot, which brings them to the Artemis. The pen is just a fancy courier package full of tiny, but extremely rare, diamonds which belong to the Top Dog criminal in the city, the Wolf King. And the Wolf King is on his way to the Artemis, for his own reasons. Honolulu didn't want to do that.

This movie, like others of its neo noir ilk, such as Bad Times at the El Royale or Knives Out or Free Fire, is all about its characters. Despite my lack of saying so in any of my (toasty)posts about these movies, what remains (of the day) is the characters, not just the ensemble cast, but the colourful people populating them. THIS really stands out in Hotel Artemis, and not just for Charlie Day being Charlie Day, as he channels Hannibal Chau from Pacific Rim mixed with his own character in that movie, which I suspect, is basically Charlie Day. And Sofia Boutella (Star Trek Beyond) being her usual uber-sexy and uber-dangerous self as Nice (France, not kind) the assassin with an agenda. And Dave Bautista's giant sized orderly, who is surprisingly delicate. And Jodie Foster's Nurse, who is shuffling around, sneaking nips from a bottle, channeling a Frances McDormand character from one of her mid-west dramas. And the Wolf King himself, Jeff Goldblum (Independence Day Resurgence) being very Jeff. Even Sterling K Brown, who I really know these days for crying in TV ads for This Is Us, stands out as the straight man amongst all the colourful characters. And yes, there are more characters.

The plot is a convergence of events, violently and dramatically, as one would expect of criminals. Each person is there for a reason, which intersects with at least one of the others, and at the end, changes everyone's path irrevocably, including that of the hotel itself. What makes this movie so much fun, being that this is a familiar neo-noir plot, is the presentation, the world in which its set, and how all the characters fit into it. The movie just looks good, both grounded in its run-down nature, and forward thinking, with its tech & gadgets everywhere. It is not John Wick style and glamour, but it drips with character.