New Rose Hotel captures the bleakness and despair of the short story that seems common to William Gibson's writing. I enjoyed the performances of Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe and the babe was sufficiently babeish to hold my interest though her acting was just OK. The movie peaked too soon and the flashbacks to the film's beginning were too long and repetitious. The short story didn't have enough depth to fill out the movie. William Gibson is heavy on description and atmosphere, a master at it. "Neuromancer", his best book, is enthralling even if you don't know what is happening. The screenplay for the movie should have been padded out more in the beginning maybe showing some history of X and some of the babe's motivations clearer. The story was somewhat obscure. If you didn't listen carefully you missed the plot. The movie was flawed but atmospheric and moody enough to be of interest. William Gibson's fans should see it to see how the book's mood was captured.
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barberoux15 February 2000
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proterozoic31 December 2011Abel Ferrara found himself in a MacGyver situation: to improvise a cyberpunk film with a) several very good actors, b) a camcorder, c) an impressive but extremely short and sketchy story by William Gibson, d) futuristic props consisting entirely of a PDA (google it, kids) and a half-bitten circuit board, and e) $600 bucks for expenses.
This is all conjecture on my part, based on nothing more than having seen New Rose Hotel. Can you blame me? After hacking off all the stylistic coir, the story is as such: it's the Future. The most profitable form of industrial espionage is stealing human talent. Two threadbare hijack artists, played by Walken and Dafoe, will lure a brilliant scientist named Hiroshi from Evil Megacorp to Mega Evilcorp. They will use a magnetic temptress that they pick from a squirming Shinjuku flesh pit based on her skill at fellating a karaoke mic.
Asia Argento is the girl – the actress has, the rarity of rarities! not only sex appeal but enough charisma and acting ability to work the part. Unfortunately, the singing is bad, and the songs are bad, and the sexy bar where they are performed is not very sexy at all. While we're at it, the future is not all that futuristic. The sex, of which there is plenty, is made up of cuts, quick pans and motion blur. The seduction and abduction of Hiroshi is talked about exhaustively, but would have been pedestrian even if it didn't entirely take place off-camera.
In brief, the amount of abstraction and suspension required to enjoy – if I may use such a bold term – "New Rose Hotel" hangs some serious lifting on the viewer. Discounting the bland nudity, the only distinct pleasure is watching Christopher Walken's line delivery. The one other actor who gets to do anything of note is his partner in crime, Willem Dafoe; unfortunately, his arc comes down to getting warned severely against falling in love with Argento's character, then falling in love with her like a man taking a headfirst dive on a concrete slab.
Some people have called this movie confusing, but they are dumb. The plot is crystal clear. It's simple as a triangle. Others have called it a boring, flickering mess, which is a much harder charge to beat. You know those "reveal" montages where the main character figures out the horrible secret? They're all made up the same way, with ominous music getting louder in the background, snippets of flashback picked half-second at a time from various parts of the movie, and key lines of dialogue played over and over, with an echo effect added on top.
The entire movie plays like one of those. A relatively simple story is packed inside a fifteen-layered rebus of headache, eyestrain and tinnitus as you squint to figure out what's on screen. If this is how the regular narrative plays, then as a parting fillip, the entire last half hour of the movie is made up of an actual flashback montage as one of the characters, soon to be found and killed by his enemies, is reliving past mistakes and pleasures in a dinky hotel room.
Some have complained about this sequence because it goes on for about 20 minutes after even the densest of us have figured out every plot secret. I think they're missing the point – the scene isn't a reveal, but the fevered, looping memories of a man who's about to kick off the chair. As such, it has a good deal of pathos. However, in the end, it's not really all that interesting, good-looking or original. And way, way too long.
The central question of New Rose Hotel is as follows: is there any reason at all to watch this dizzy 90-minute montage, when you could read the original short story in 15 minutes? None, actually. Unless you are enough of a stim addict to prefer watching any sort of dull video to reading any kind of engaging prose. -
VisionThing17 June 2003With a solid plot basis (William Gibson short story), two excellent actors (Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe) and an interesting director (Abel Ferrara) this movie could have well turned out to be a real hidden gem. Dario Argento's daughter posing as the female lead doesn't have any other qualification for her role than an Italian accent and a nice body -- no screen presence, no femme fatale charisma, no "edge" -- and the budget has obviously been someone's lunch money for a week, but those things alone would not have done too much damage. However, there are some bigger issues with this film.
In the beginning of the movie there's way too much singing in the bars, and it's all bad. I've been to karaoke bars where the performers have been significantly more talented. All of them. No kidding. And near the end the movie falls apart, mainly thanks to way too many flashbacks -- they are not of just one or two key scenes, but of umpteen, in a peculiar "here's the movie again in case you missed it" fashion. They are annoying as such, and as a result you probably lose your focus and, consequently, your grasp of the plot. What you end up having instead of a real movie is a 90 minutes long artsy collection of insubstantial sleazy moving pictures with nudity.
In short, the first half of the movie does not get your hopes up too high, yet the latter half is disappointing. Kind of an achievement, I suppose. For better or worse, Walken's cool charisma and Argento's numerous nude scenes may still keep you awake through the whole thing. 4/10 -
lazarillo13 March 2004It's hard to believe that a movie directed by Abel Ferrara based on a story by William Gibson and starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento would be anything less than great, but this movie is just OK. It has a lot of moody atmosphere. Asia A., the lovely Eurobabe who is supposedly ogre-ish horror-meister Dario Argento's daughter (I, for one, won't believe it until I see the blood tests), spends most of the movie in various states of undress (unfortunately, so does Dafoe). Walken is great as always. But literally nothing happens. It's all atmosphere, eerie music, and occasional bursts of softcore groping. Neither Ferrara's visuals, Walken's acting presence, or Argento's tatooed nether regions can ultimately carry a film so totally devoid of conventional plot, suspense, or action. Not a bad film, just a disappointing one.
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lemon_magic1 April 2007I was very disappointed by "New Rose Hotel" - how can something featuring Christopher Walken and Willen Defoe be this bad? - but I should have seen it coming, given the nature of the source material.
William Gibson is a great writer who I hardly ever read anymore. He's incredibly inventive and is a master at fabricating convincing, compelling future societies...but his world-view and opinion of human nature is just too glum and depressing. And, unfortunately for a film adaptation, Gibson dialog that sounds convincing and right in the context of the printed page often rattles in the ear like a tin washer when declaimed by a human actor. Simiarly, 90% of the plot development in Gibson's fiction is mysterious, ambiguous, muffled, and cryptic - much like a John LeCarre "Smiley" Cold War novel, there is so much dealing, double dealing, betrayal and backstabbing going on behind the scenes, much of which the reader is not privy too, that it required intense concentration on every aspect of the plot to keep from being completely buffaloed by the events.
On top of this, this is a science fiction story that requires a convincing visual setting to pull the viewer in, the way Gibson's telling details and rolling "techno-speak" pull his readers in. "New Rose Hotel" didn't seem to have much of a budget, so it had to skimp on the settings and the props and just concentrate on the characters and the plot.
All these issues can make for very problematic material for a cinematic adaptation, and alas, the director and screenwriter don't come close to solving those problems. They seemed to have opted for mood and character study over plot momentum and story arc, and as a result, we spend vast amounts of movie time watching Defoe sit glumly in a tiny hotel "capsule", brooding over his mistakes while the movies interrupts with recaps and flashbacks of various scenes of people sitting around drinking and talking at each other. As much as I like Defoe and Walken, even they can't carry this for entire film. The overall impression I get is of a movie just sits around and mopes whenever it isn't being cryptic and dull.
Much has been made of the supposed "hotness" of actress Asia Argento, but since this is a movie where sex is just another tool for corporate espionage, the screenplay itself seems to strip her character of any real humanity, and she comes across as a simple "hooker Barbie" character. That may actually be a tribute to deliberate efforts of both Argento and the director, but it doesn't make for on screen erotic charge. I will say that I've seen her in other roles, and I have to admit she can be a tasty dish. But not so much here.
I liked the original story - it's pure Gibson through and though - but this version of it just doesn't work unless you're an obsessive fan of moody lighting and muffled, expressionistic nihilism. It's too well made to give less than a 5, but that score is a grudging concession to how hard the actors and the cinematographer worked to pull off impossibly stilted and scrambled material. -
user-2894122 September 2008I'm a big Gibson fan, a big Walken fan, a big Dafoe fan, Asia Argento ain't bad to look at, and here is my favorite illustrator, Amano, in his only film appearance. Wow! I was real excited to find out this short story had been made into a movie with such a great cast.
After seeing it, it's no wonder I'd never heard of it all this time. It just stinks.
Walken is really the only thing carrying the movie at all. The other characters are all unlikeable and easily forgettable. Dafoe is a silly caricature. Argento can't act worth a damn. Amano has no lines.
The plot is fairly straight-forward, but for some reason the director decided to abruptly end the movie about two-thirds of the way through, and then replay the whole thing over again in a series of unnecessary flashbacks inter-spliced with what would be included as deleted scenes on the modern day DVD.
I really wanted to like this movie, but there's just nothing there except for one of Walken's canned sociopath characters (although well done) and Argento's boobs, which are exposed so many times by the end of the movie, I actually got bored of seeing them. Too bad. -
Whitefield8 October 2002Truly dreadful, slow, boring. Couldn't care less about the characters or the (nonexistent) plot. You must have read the Gibson short story to have any clue what your emotions should be.
Zero special effects, zero character development, zero cinematography, zero interesting anything (well, nude Asia Argento was okay). And the last act simply rehashes the dreck you've already experienced.
This thing looks like a film made by a 14 year old on his Mac. It makes Johnny Mnenonic look like Lawrence of Arabia. How *did* this "movie" get made?
At least there was one laugh: the shaky image projected onto a palm pilot, trying to make it look like some future device. Was that really supposed to be believable? Sheesh.
Stay away. -
wigz25 November 1999This is a decent Abel Ferrara movie,with Walken turning in another memorable performance.I figure any movie with Walken's name listed in the credits first is worth watching.It did feel like the most important scenes were not filmed, and the rehashing of earlier scenes in the third act is really tedious. Overall, I think this movie would have been great with a bigger budget, but as it stands, I'd only recommend this to Walken fans.
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dave13-119 July 2008The film never creates the tense, doom-laden atmosphere of William Gibson's short story about corporate espionage in a grim near-future setting, leaving the viewer to spend a numbing hour and half with unheroic and uninteresting characters doing not much of anything. The original story had little in the way of plot as well. It did, however, have a great overlying menace, set in a world where cutthroat corporate Gestapos kill to protect the technology they control. Here you only get a vague hint of that for the first ten minutes, at which point the film settles into a slice-of-lowlife study of its downbeat characters and loses all forward momentum. Watch DEMONLOVER instead for a similar story done right.
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lingmeister18 May 2002This movie seem to go all out for the ambience of what it could be like in the near future, giving us a look of the cold and bleak world that is set out for us. It doesn't quite succeed like in Blade Runner, probably due to its small budget, limited settings, which were mostly indoors, but it gave it a good run for the money.
On the plot side, I think it might have been better if the flashback method of the original story were used. This will avoid the replay of the first 2/3 of the film onto the final 1/3. Plus it would have also lead us to see how X (William Dafoe), being a person who frequents high caliber hotels all over the world, ended up in a porta-crypt.
Also, there seem to be too many ambiguous plot lines or cues that's either meaningless or completely open to interpretation. What's the significance of the tattoo on Sandii's (Asia Argento) belly? Was her deception both ways toward X? If it was, it was not implied at the end.
Christopher Walken, William Dafeo were both good in the film, with Walken putting his quirky improvisations to his character and Dafeo serious and troubled as usual. The surprise was Asia Argento, who's sultry performance proves that not all non English speaking actresses has to act as if they are reading lines like the way Penelope Cruz does.
Overall, a satisfactory film, giving a good visual and feel, but not dense enough in plot to make complete sense or to fill out the 90 minutes the movie takes. -
frankylamouche4 February 2013What more could Abel Ferrara ask for: acerbic Christopher Walken, inscrutable Willem Defoe, hot Asia Argento channeling Cat Power, Schoolly D laying beats. Dynamite. Unfortunately, Abe couldn't find the fuse. A dud.
The opening credits, in three different languages like a DSLR instruction manual (German, Chinese, and English), are accompanied by Schoolly D's great soundtrack, the best part of the movie.
Asia, the heroine, is of the kinky persuasion, a denizen of dark underground group gropes. Shades of Jack Smith and Andy Warhol.
The dialog is nonsense like an uninteresting Little Steven's Underground Garage. Someone needs to tell Abel that gangsters spouting philosophy doesn't work. Godard tried and bored us to tears. Like Jean-Luc, Ferrara stretches his scenes interminably with dialog that made its point after the first two lines but for reasons that can only relate to stretching to meet a budget goes on forever. Gangster films are about, as Sam Fuller famously said, emotion and violence, not long interludes of one thief pitching a caper to another.
Abel is a consummate hustler, his packages find big money, but wind up garbage. It's not as if the movie ran out of ideas early on and the director had to pad it to deliver the requisite hour and a half to meet his business commitment, the movie has no ideas. "New Rose Hotel" serves only one purpose, as an investment loss to a tax write off. The last 20 minutes rehash scenes already shot, as if the director had run out of production money and had to make up the time in post-production. Thus the movie is in two parts: the first part bad, the second part, a rehash of the first, worse.
A low brow effort with high brow pretensions clearly beyond the director's capabilities. Abel, stick to street punks.
In summary, the best part Schoolly D. (See the extra on Schoolly D from the DVD of "The King of New York." It's better than the feature.) -
Captain_Couth15 August 2005New Rose Hotel (1998) was another strange film from Abel Ferrara. Instead of his usual street dramas. Ferrara expands upon the elements that he utilized whilst making BLACKOUT. A dark and moody film that was adapted from a short story that was written by William Gibson. I was surprised by how intriguing and interesting the movie was. I have heard so many negative things about this production that I was a little leery in watching it. But I was impressed by the story, acting and directing.
Christopher Walken and Wilhem Dafoe are two losers who are always looking for rich people to swindle. One day they find the perfect pigeon who'll make them a lot of money. But they need a seductress. They find one in Asia Argento (who's smoking hot in this movie). During the bug hustle, Dafoe falls for her and the two make a side swindle. Unfortunately nothing is really as it seems. Instead of running off with Asia, Dafoe tries to play all sides but he winds up with nothing. Before he can split, his mentor Walken kills himself before the hit men can ice him. Dafoe realizes that he's be burned by a better con artist and flees. Hiding from everyone, Dafoe spends the rest of his pathetic life hiding out in a derelict apartment complex The New Rose Hotel where he re-lives the last month of his life over and over until he ends it all.
Even though we never see what happens to Dafoe's character, one can assume what happens to him. He has nowhere to go but inside the coffin he's created. The movie is a serious character study about not knowing what you could have and how greed and stupidity make a dangerous combination. I found this movie to be very deep and moving as well. But it's not for everyone.
Highly recommended. -
gbill-748772 November 2023It looks like Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken had fun making this, and they turn in fine performances. When do they not, right? Asia Argento is good too, though Abel Ferrara was a little excessive in how often he had her writhing around erotically. His storytelling was also a mixed bag. I liked how he didn't fill in all the details and had the plot simply jump forward from time to time, but it seemed like a little bit more of it should have been fleshed out. The final twenty minutes have one of the characters reliving how things went wrong, which was unique and imparted that haunting feeling many of us have while experiencing profound regret, but it did get to feeling like too much of a rehash, especially since the truth remained elusive. Polished up a bit this could have been a real gem, but it's not so bad as it is.
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yv_es8 May 2020I really wanted to like this movie. I mean Abel Ferrara shooting a William Gibson story with Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe? That sounds awesome!
Just five minutes in however I knew that "New Rose Hotel" was not going to be a good film. By the 20 minute mark, I had come to realize that it wasn't just not good, it is actually a really bad film trying hard to look smart. After that, the only thing that kept me watching was a sort of morbid curiosity. Like how much worse it could it possibly get? Well my lord does it all come together into an astoundingly mess.
First off, the writing is simply inexcusable. The intro scene in the apartment in particular has really stilted dialog and is basically just Christopher Walken telling us: here's the world, here's who I am, and here's the plot of this here film. How do you manage to shoot such a horrible scene with Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe!
The sets and clothing would feel more at home in a 90s sitcom than in a cyberpunk film. It all feels cheap, and not in a enduring way either: cheap filming, cheap editing, cheap acting, cheap effects, cheap writing. A video of Christopher Walken in a bathrobe reading the original Gibson story would be way better than this.
I love trash 90s films but this one has not held up well. Not that it was ever a good film. "New Rose Hotel" would have been bad even it were just a 90s made TV movie shot by a nobody with no-name actors. But the fact that this film has so much potential yet is such an incompetent and boring mess cements this as perhaps the greatest waste I've come across in recent memory. Only watch this if you are a film student who wants to learn what not to do in a movie. -
gnosticboy7 December 2002After reading a number of reviews at imdb--and elsewhere--I have to come-down-on-the-side of the director, Abel Ferrera's
vision. This is a GREAT science-fiction film, and for those who are
generally-disappointed with it, I have to ask whether they
understand what sci-fi IS. If science-fiction isn't about the present
(as-filtered through an imagined-future), it generally isn't good, but
New Rose Hotel fits this criteria. This is a pretty-old story from the
80s that Gibson had published in "Omni Magazine," it might-have
been his first-acceptance. While it is a minor-story, it has
dramatic-elements to it that are very-pleasing within-the-structure
of the "Ferrera" universe: a metropolitan-dystopia, urban and
moral-decay, the eternal quest by many for "power," official- corruption, the consequences of murder, sexuality, drugs, how
memory works, they all mesh-well with Ferrera's thematic-styles.
There are no great moral-lessons here, this is about the aftermath
of that paradigm. The only-complaint I have is that the future has
caught-up a bit, due to the age of the original-story. With our
human-society growing more-restrictive, with the rise of corporate- statism, and the subsequent-decline of the Nation State, New
Rose Hotel seems almost "quaint." That should give-us-pause. -
FiendishDramaturgy4 June 2007Corporate raiders use any trick conceivable to lure a genius into their fold...oh, and to win.
This was a rambling and unfocused tale with some mildly interesting plot elements, which suffer completely convoluted execution. Other than some nice camera angles and lighting details, there is nothing at all to redeem this work.
Not even Christopher Walken's wonderful performance could save this flop. Willem Dafoe comes close, but no cigar. I suppose it may be worth watching for their performances, but you surely have to be a connoisseur to derive a moment's pleasure, even from that. OH, they're good, don't get me wrong, but the screenplay is horrid. Simply horrid.
All in all? Don't bother.
It rates a 0.7/10 from...
the Fiend :. -
monkeysontoast16 July 2006The ONLY reason I rented it was to up my quota of Chris films seen (I'm now around 70-some, in case you were interested), and after renting it and turning it on, I still really can't say that I've seen it. I saw the first twenty minutes, when I was actually paying attention to the screen, but then I decided to take a nap, set my alarm, and went to sleep with the movie droning in the background. Yea, it was pretty bad. I should've know...despite starring Chris, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento, it WAS directed by Abel Ferrara, and boy, can i not stand that guy. I've never seen a movie of his that I liked...even King of New York, which boasts one of Chris's best performances. Oh well, I'll stop talking about it now, since I've nothing to say, and no rating to give...only a warning...don't see this movie (oh, unless you want to see Asia Argento take her clothes off, every couple of minutes, for the span of the movie).
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L. Lion21 January 2001I have often imagined how the film of William Gibson's brilliant cyberpunk short story of corporate espionage and betrayal could be made. I pictured how I would do it in my head, but I didn't know if there was enough substance in the story for a complete two hour movie. After several directors tried and failed to get the film financed, Abel Ferrara was finally the one to make it. He succeeds in developing the gloss and style necessary to create the atmosphere of debauchery and intrigue at the heart of the short story, but style is skin deep and becomes a very weak means to an end. Once the movie moves out of the whorehouse and into the plot, it disappears into a morass of visual stylistics and a wasted half-hour of reiterated images that have no meaning and no impact. For a similar treatment of film-making, a viewer could avail themselves of Dennis Hopper's dreadful 'The Last Movie'.
I will give Mr. Ferrara credit where it is due with his film - he creates a very evocative and sensual Tokyo underworld, and gets a strong performance from Christopher Walken as Fox, the head of a syndicate that is going to seduce and snatch the world's top genetic biologist from one mega-corporation to work for another. The exposition, which is long and luxurious, also brings in the tool for the seduction - a young Italian harlot named Sandii (Asia Argento), whose pouty lips, sensuously unkempt hair and beautiful body will be the tool to lure the scientist from his 'ball-busting' wife and displeasure with his current position. She is trained well - the scientist Hiroshi is protected by his employer and it will take extra skills to earn his defection. Everybody will earn big bucks to bring this brain over. Walken effortlessly explains the plot and invites the girl in, although she has been sleeping with his associate X (Willem Dafoe). Dafoe is in on the deal, but is also falling in love with Sandii, even though he knows she is prone to lying about almost everything.
From the point their plot starts to go into action (about the 40-minute mark) Ferrara's instincts go all wrong. Rather than following Sandii into the heart of the seduction, we are kept at a distance - the information about their success/failure is relayed through an exasperating series of off-kilter video images which worked in the whorehouse environment but do not work here, flashing back to Fox strutting around crowing and $100,000,000 being put into their account for the success of their mission. But then, without adding excessive spoilers, there is a terrible betrayal, everything goes wrong, and they wind up on the lam, with X hiding out at the New Rose Hotel. He crawls into his tiny concrete berth in this Tokyo hotel at around the 60 minute mark in the movie and does not leave. At this point the short story ends with a perfunctory sentence or two, but here Ferrara's narrative goes all awry. He expendes another half hour explaining the roots of the betrayal for those daft enough not to understand it the first time. There's nothing like taking a 60-minute movie and then turning it into a 90-minute movie by replaying clips from the first 60 minutes for half an hour. There were so many fade-outs during this time that at least 4 times I expected to start seeing credits, only to drop my jaw as we get another scene of Dafoe in bed with Argento. It was flabbergastingly bad film-making of the sort expected from subsidized European productions, and Dafoe was simply not up to emoting X's desperation, fear and hopeless longing.
Ferrara's stylistics at the beginning of the film lead one to expect something much better, but his narrative sense fails him completely. I give it three out of ten - pluses for eroticism and bare bones atmosphere, a zero for anything past the 50-minute mark. -
dungeonstudio14 February 2021As much as I like Abel's works, this is one of his weakest. Almost as if trying to ride on the coat tails of Wim Wenders 'Until The End Of The World' sans narrative to make it more mysterious. It works and doesn't work, ala Blade Runner. Had there been a voice over to explain things a bit better, and a version without - I think this movie could've fared much better in reception. As it stands, the viewer has to piece together the characters from scratch. Fox and X (Walken and Dafoe) start off as a couple of seemingly sleazy sex purveyors at a lurid club. X is attracted to and beds Sandi (Argento), whom Fox makes an offer to as he intrudes on them in the morning. Tempt this brilliant Japanese scientist whose living like a rock star already into falling for her, and follow her wherever she may go. Fox and X have been planning this for a year, and have personal footage of the scientist's interests and perversions. Sandi accepts the challenge, and Fox wants X to make her irresistible. Where the movie goes off the rails is that we never see Sandi with the scientist. It skips time to where she returns to report to Fox and X how everything is going. She's won him over, caused him to leave his wife and is totally wrapped around her finger. Fox is more than elated with this, and plans to set the scientist up in Marrakesh, and let the rival corporation know he has him - but for a large sum of money. X and Sandi try to continue their relationship, but are now both scared that with this scientist lured away and the money involved, things could get dangerous. And without giving spoilers away - things go very bad, very quickly! And the remainder of the movie is essentially X trying to piece it all together what and who went wrong? Without any clear conclusion other than what the viewer can construed. Who was the double crosser? Was Sandi in on it well before X even saw her? Did Fox push it too far? Or were they all so naive to think it was going to be a easy relocation? The movie is based on a short story by 'cyber punk' author William Gibson. I had bought the French special edition of this movie, which does include the original story with the movie, which I haven't read yet. And maybe advisable to do so before diving into the movie cold? The cast play their parts well, as mysterious as they all seem to be. But any subtleties of looks or pertinent dialog never come to full fruition. Are they aware of certain things - or just suspicious? And as X says so blatantly approaching the climax "I'm sorry, I'm just confused" Aren't we all after this mess?
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New Rose Hotel (1998) is a movie that I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows two men with plans for revenge and robbery and they believe a recent call girl they've encountered is the final piece to their master plan. As they work closer together relationships are both strengthened and weakened. As the plans unfold the strength of those bonds will determine their success.
This movie is directed by Abel Ferrara (King of New York) and stars Christopher Walken (Dead Zone), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man), Asia Argento (xXx), Annabella Sciorra (Jungle Fever), Victor Argo (Raw Deal) and Gretchen Mol (Boardwalk Empire).
This cast and storyline had so much potential. Everyone delivers an outstanding performance and Walken and Dafoe play off each other perfectly. I also enjoyed Argento's evolution as the movie unfolds. Unfortunately, the plot is very predictable and everything happens exactly as you think it will. The twists at the end you see coming and the outcome is unfortunate but straightforward. I did think the dialogue was well written, the chemistry between cast was authentic and the circumstances relatively realistic.
Overall, this is a very average movie that's not very memorable. I would score this a 5/10 and only recommend it if nothing better is available. -
kosmasp10 July 2022It may seem like I am just throwing words out there with the summary line above. In reality ... well it sort of is true. But there is meaning behind this. And if you ever wondered, if Dafoe and Walken did a movie together ... well wonder no more. Although to be honest and just to be sure you won't be too dissapointed, do not set your hopes too high.
While they never can fully fail at anything, this rather feels a bit like a letdown. If you are drawn in this because of Asia Argento, you may see things differently. No pun intended, nudity on the other hand, seems more than intended.
I have not read the story this is based on, which is supposed to be really good. This also allegedly is a bit of a watered down version of what was in that story. Not sure if the Science Fiction left in (for the movie) is sufficient to make this appealing to you.
Overall decent, but not as manic as any other interview Abel Ferrara is giving. The man is ... well he is quite the character. For better or worse - I imagine he has done things to people (under the influence or not), that others would get into a lot of trouble ... but we are talking about his movies and not him as a person (as in judging his art, rather than him) ... -
NoDakTatum29 October 2023Abel Ferrara, the loose cannon director behind such fare as "Ms .45" and "Bad Lieutenant" finally finds time to make his worst film. Based on a William Gibson short story, X (Willem Dafoe) and Fox (Christopher Walken) are hired to lure scientist Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano) from one giant corporation to another. Promised one hundred million dollars, the duo hire Sandii (Asia Argento) to seduce Hiroshi from his wife and job, and take up with the competition. To complicate matters, X and Sandii begin having feelings for one another while the physically handicapped Fox can only look on from the sidelines, perhaps jealous of the both of them. Sandii succeeds in her endeavor, but things go awry when someone murders Hiroshi and his coworkers, and Sandii disappears. X then begins tracing his memories of his time with Sandii to find out what happened.
Believe me, the plot summary is the most exciting thing about this dull film. Not many can accuse Ferrara of ever making something boring, but he did here. The film opens and immediately the viewer will think they came in on the middle of the story. For most of the first third of the film, I had no idea what was going on. I watched, even took notes, but Ferrara refuses to let his audience in on the plot. As I deciphered what was happening, the plot lurched forward until the final quarter of the film. X is now a resident of the title hotel, one of those Japanese hotels where everyone sleeps in tiny cubby holes. Then, and I am not exaggerating, Ferrara spends at least twenty minutes in flashback to the first hour of the film. If it did not make sense the first time around, it sure didn't with the flashback. Ferrara shows us important clues that X should have caught, knowing Sandii may not be all that she was. Do you know what? The audience sort of figures this out anyway, especially with a cast this small. The flashback is a padded, tacked-on sequence. It is as if Ferrara knew he had nothing here, and wanted to use smoke and mirrors to boost the comprehension level. It does not work. Walken and Dafoe are okay, they are not given enough characterization. They do improvise plenty, what else can you do with these shallow parts? Dafoe tries to ad lib with Argento, but the actress gamely sticks to the script, trying to say her line as Dafoe plays with his dialogue. Annabella Sciorra has a cameo that makes no sense, as does famed composer and actor Ryuichi Sakamoto. Usually Ferrara's work earns a cult following, but I had never heard of this film until I saw it on a video rental shelf. It is so bad, there were no critics' quotes on the box trying to make this sound better than it is. Throw in underwhelmingly cheap special effects, and Ferrara's silly video camera surveillance shots, and "New Rose Hotel" is one loser of a film. I'll recommend "New Rose Hotel" to Ferrara fans, and insomniacs. -
Holocinema14 September 2004SPOILER
In the end it's all about Sandi's treason, Dafoe remembering how she betrayed him, and how he let himself be betrayed (he found the key in her passport and at one time she disappears to get the apartment key...except the key is in the door as Dafoe finds out...he had all the signs that allowed him to realize she was going to betray him, still he didn't do anything) he was seduced in the same way Hiroshi was. He wanted to get away with herself and the money, and all he gets is a stab in the back, she's gone and there's nothing he can do about it except remembering all this in the dark room of New Rose Hotel (the way he remembers the sex scenes reminds me a bit of the character in "Strange Days" that remembers his happy past with the Juliette Lewis character through the mental video engine). Many will find the ending frustrating, and it is frustrating, it's about a man realizing he's been had. -
tieman647 July 2014"Virtue has never been as respectable as money." - Mark Twain
Abel Ferrara's "New Rose Hotel" opens with murky surveillance footage. Hiroshi (Yoshitaka Amano), a brilliant researcher, is being observed by Fox (Christopher Walken) and X (Willem Dafoe), two corporate extraction specialists. Fox hopes to manipulate Hiroshi into leaving Maas, the transnational corporation at which he works, in favour for joining Hosaka, a rival corporation. Whoever controls Hiroshi controls big bucks.
What's odd about this surveillance footage, though, is that X is also being observed. So who, if not Fox and X, is ultimately behind the extraction of Hiroshi? And who is watching all three characters?
"Hotel's" second scene takes place in a shadowy brothel. "There's a war being waged for every shred of information," Fox is told, "and the corporate suits are killing each other by the thousands every year. It's the Holocaust of the 21st century. Everybody knows, nobody says anything and governments are just as culpable." The speaker then tries to sell Fox a job pushing cutting edge viruses, but Fox ignores him, more interested in the sultry female bodies gyrating in a corner. Moments later Fox has a conversation with Madam Rosa, the brothel owner. "I've given up looking for knowledge and virtue", Fox admits, the guy now existing solely to chase after cash and sex. This pursuit's gotten his back broken; Fox limps with a cane.
As Ferrara's camera zooms in on Fox, a lounge singer stops singing about "looking for love without love" and starts singing about a woman whose "soul's as black as black". Enter Sandii (the smoky eyed Asia Argento), a prostitute who takes to a microphone. "I loved you for forever and a day but you walked away," she prophetically sings. Fox gets an idea: he'll use Sandii to seduce Hiroshi away from Maas. Afterall, Fox says, Hiroshi has everything – money, riches, status – except love. Fox will provide the love. But is Madam Rosa planting Sandii to get at Fox? Is Sandii ultimately seducing Fox and not Hiroshi?
Fox, X and Sandii begin putting their plan into motion. Along the way, X falls in love with Sandii and she, apparently, with him. "Let's make believe," she says in their living room, as she strokes Fox's ego under the guise of stroking Hiroshi's. Fox is hooked. She's his ticket to Hiroshi and Hiroshi, on the brink of patenting "high speed proteins", is Fox's ticket to millions. We then learn that it is Madam Rosa supplying Fox with surveillance footage and that Madam Rosa is being bankrolled by Maas. Fox, unaware that he is being set-up, remains optimistic. "The new virtue," Fox says, "is going to the edge. This plan takes us to the edge!"
Holding onto virtue becomes the dilemma of the film's last act. Here Sandii reveals that she is "really in love with X" and that she "doesn't wish to continue a false relationship with Hiroshi". X, in turn, is madly in love with Sandii. The duo contemplate running away together. Whether Sandii is being genuine is unknown – she used the same words and ploy on Hiroshi – but this love affair, be it real or simulated, is nevertheless enough to set in motion a chain reaction, X's handlers (Fox and Hosaka) and Sandii's "real handlers" (Madam Rosa and Maas) now deciding to do a little spring cleaning. Fox is thus killed, possibly Sandii as well, and assassins are sent for X. It is also revealed that Maas was allowing the defection of Hiroshi so that a virus carried by him infects all other scientists at Hosaka. This is the synthetic virus alluded to in Rosa's brothel, a virus that may have been administered by Sandii.
That Maas (Maas: "more", "limitless") has won this little game of corporate Darwinism is of no concern to Ferrara. Instead, he devotes the last 30 minutes of his film to a massive flashback sequence. Here, locking himself in a "capsule hotel", X "rewinds" and "fast forwards" through the film we have just watched, searching memory engrams for clues that Sandii betrayed and so did not love him. A reversal of Ferrara's "Blackout", in which a character realizes that he was blind to and so missed the virtues of lovers around him, "Hotel" portrays X indulging in a game of selective memory and mental re-writing. Whereas most climactic flashback sequences seek to quickly and dramatically draw attention to clues which audiences may have overlooked, Ferrara's flashback takes the form of a slow, pathetic descent into, not revelation, but delusion. By its end, X has misread clues, has misconstrued Sandii's love as deception, has convinced himself that Sandii was "never genuine" and has rationalised that it was he who had "been used and betrayed" rather than her. "If you want to, you can walk away," Fox sees himself telling Sandii, the very challenge she in actuality put to him. More importantly, Fox has begun eradicating his belief in virtue. If everyone around you wants something, X rationalises, then nobody could possibly want to give you anything, let alone love. By the film's end, X's philosophy ("How much more money must you make? What else is ahead?") has been replaced by Fox's cynicism ("That's lust, not love!"), and Sandii, whom X refused to run away with out of loyalty to Fox's ethos, becomes the little girl betrayed and lost on the altar of profit.
"New Rose Hotel" was based on a short story by cyberpunk novelist William Gibson. Like Gibson's novels, it is set in a high tech future rife with social decay, warring factions, technology-savvy low-lives, corporate prostitutes, killer DNA, research which advances faster than it can be stolen and shady bodies who have long realised that the best way to control the opposition is to finance it. Typical of Gibson's work, the tale relies heavily on noir tropes.
8.5/10 – Underrated. See the similarly themed "Demonlover" and "Boarding Gate".