Hotel Artemis *** (2018, Jodie Foster, Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Charlie Day) – Movie Review

Quirky, fun and exciting indie action thriller in the Free Fire vein, but with a bit of a heart and a bit of a brain too. Jodie Foster and Dave Bautista have a great double act going.

Writer-director Drew Pearce’s Hotel Artemis is a quirky, fun and exciting indie action thriller in the Free Fire vein, but with a bit of a heart and a bit of a brain too. It is that increasing rare thing – an original one-off, not a sequel, prequel or franchise episode. And is very welcome for that.

Jodie Foster and Dave Bautista have a great double act going as the Nurse and her assistant Everest who run a secret, members-only emergency hotel for wounded criminals in riot-torn Los Angeles in the near future. It is a place with a lot of rules all laid down by the Nurse for survival – No Guns, No Cops, No Killing the Other Patients – and some of them are going to be broken.

Sofia Boutella as Nice in Hotel Artemis.

Sofia Boutella enjoys her kick-ass role as Nice, Jeff Goldblum is amusing as the wounded Niagara, and Charlie Day scores as the gung-ho Acapulco, while Sterling K Brown, Brian Tyree Henry and Jenny Slate are good as Waikiki, Honolulu and Morgan.

The script is a bit untidy and under-realised, and the direction is messy and unfocused, betraying producer and writer Pearce’s inexperience as direction. But that is not enough to spoil it. There are also a lot of good things about Pearce’s script – interesting characters, funny scenes and witty banter.

It’s grand to see Foster having a crack at a feisty, obstinate but uber-resourceful old lady character part, and, as expected, she is excellent at it, relishing her laughs. Anyone for Hotel Artemis 2? Probably not, alas. Even though low budget at $15,000,000, it has struggled at the box office, taking $6,700,000 in the US, and a total of $8,312,000 so far worldwide.

© Derek Winnert 2018 Movie Review

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