Saturday, December 1, 2018

Hotel Artemis - A Rather Unique but not the Most Memorable Cyberpunk Thriller

This movie actually played in Indonesian theaters since Tuesday, but my wife and I opted to see another movie that we had been eyeing since weekend. And due to some movies that I saw in the past 2 days, I only got the chance to see this one last night. My wife did not accompany me as I was not sure of the quality. Anyway, let's get on with the movie now.

Brief Story Line

Set in the year 2028, Los Angeles was in a riot due to fresh water being charged. Criminal brothers Sherman (Sterling K. Brown - The Predator, Black Panther etc) and Lev (Brian Tyree Henry - Atlanta TV series etc) were injured during a bank heist and went to a secret hospital especially for criminals named Hotel Artemis. The hotel was managed by Nurse Jean (Jodie Foster - The Accused, The Silence of the Lambs etc) with her helper Everest (Dave Bautista - Final Score, Guardians of the Galaxy series etc).


In the hotel, there were already few other criminals including Acapulco (Charlie Day - Pacific Rim Uprising etc) and Nice (Sofia Boutella - Atomic Blonde, Star Trek Beyond etc). Later on there would also be other people entering the hotel such as the notorious criminal leader Wolf King/Niagara (Jeff Goldblum - Thor: Ragnarok, The Fly etc) and another person wounded in the riot named Morgan (Jenny Slate - The Lego Batman Movie etc) who would complicate matters for both Nurse & Everest.

Things would soon become bad for everyone in Hotel Artemis when 1 of them had a secret plan that would endanger all the people as well as the livelihood of the Hotel. Especially when a trigger happy son of Wolf King named Crosby (Zachary Quinto - Heroes TV series etc) also came to the hotel. So how would the story continued? Find them all in this quite unique cyberpunk thriller movie.

End of Brief Story Line

Well this was a movie that I thought was quite unique. Honestly I did not know the story at all as I seemed to have read the synopsis once many months ago but I completely forgot about it. So I thought that I would just see the movie and find out the plot as it progressed. The story mostly was set in the old building where the secret hospital was operated under the name Hotel Artemis. With the mysterious surrounding and the nice vintage settings in the distant future time, it created a unique feel of modern but old. And the songs chosen to be played by Nurse also added the oldies sense as well. 

I personally thought that the visual effects in the movie were pretty good. But what I loved the most was actually the finale. It was filled with some stylish fight scenes, especially ones involving Sofia Boutella's character. There were some wonderfully crafted fight movies that I felt similar to the ones she did in Kingsman: The Secret Service. However, before we reached to the ultimate grand finale, the early part of the movie was going in a bit slow pace and unfortunately I was a bit sleepy probably due to lack of sleep the night before. Not necessarily due to the movie was boring.

There was surprisingly a bit of a twist in this movie which I felt was not really necessary. It only gave a bit of a surprise, but I thought did not add any important point to the story development, except if the outcome of that twist made the character did something different. That's just my opinion though. Oh one thing that I thought was great about this movie were the appearance of the large ensemble cast which included quite major names and their performance did not disappoint. Even Dave Bautista's characterization was quite nice here, unlike his performance in Escape Plan 2.

Overall I thought this was quite a unique movie. I personally felt it was not too bad and did have some nice parts. It may not be the best kind there is and the duration might be too short plus the action sequence might be more satisfying if they were given more. Btw, there was no mid or post end credit scene in here. And since the movie was already shown in the US theater many months ago (in June to be exact), it was no longer a hits movie for audience to see. I myself felt there was not too much sensation and did not have the most exciting experience seeing this one, but it was hardly the worst movie I ever saw. 

If you are interested in such kind of genre, then this might be suitable for you. But if you are the type of audience looking for a full action suspenseful movie, or a thriller that had got a lot of intense thrilling scenes, then you might not be really satisfied. The choice is yours.

Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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