Hotel Artemis, film review: Perfectly serviceable genre entertainment

Dir Drew Pearce, 94 mins, starring: Jodie Foster, Sterling K Brown, Dave Bautista, Sofia Boutella, Jeff Goldblum, Brian Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Charlie Day

Waikiki (Sterling K Brown) gets up close and personal with glamorous assassin Nice (Sofia Boutella) (Global Road Entertainment)

Welcome to the hotel in California that runs on “trust and rules”. The heavily fortified art deco building that gives British writer-director Drew Pearce’s feature its title is a very unsavoury establishment in the heart of Los Angeles. We are some time in the near future and the city is in the midst of violent riots over water shortages and income inequality. Gangsters and bank robbers are running amok too. The Hotel Artemis is the “members only” secret hospital where the city’s most notorious criminals go when they need urgent medical help, say a stray bullet removed or a new liver after a heist gone wrong.

Pearce’s screenplay may be full of the cartoonishly lowlife sleazeballs you expect to find in noirish thrillers like Sin City but its set-up has more than a hint of Agatha Christie about it. A group of criminals are confined together in a very small space. In spite of the hotel’s very strict policy of “no killing other patients”, they are all busy plotting to betray or murder one another. Presiding over affairs is the Nurse (Jodie Foster), a recovering alcoholic, In her big glasses and clumpy shoes, she looks very dowdy but she is both a brilliant surgeon and a capable and extremely firm manager/concierge. She has “muscle” in the shape of the appropriately named Everest (Dave Bautista), a loyal, laconic and very intimidating hulk-like figure who does everything she tells him, whether it’s putting the garbage out, fixing the electricity or beating up the bad guys.

It’s a surprise to find someone of Foster’s stature in an exploitation picture like this. She is impressive, though, playing her character as if she is one part Rosa Klebb and one part Miss Marple. There are terrible events in her past which explains just why she has taken up her unusual choice of job.

The hotel is owned by the “Wolf King” (Jeff Goldblum), the most notorious villain in the city. He may be badly wounded but the Nurse won’t break the rules to allow him a bed if there isn’t one available. The rooms are already taken by such chancers as Waikiki (Sterling K Brown) and his severely injured brother, Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry), arrogant, pint-sized arms dealer Acapulco (Charlie Day), and the lethal and very glamorous assassin Nice (Sofia Boutella).

“There is no water in LA but it is raining assholes here,” one character correctly sums up the general climate in the hotel. For reasons that don’t make much sense, a badly wounded female cop who once used to know the Nurse has turned up at the doorstep of the Hotel Artemis. To let her in is to risk disaster but she has a hold over The Nurse.

Hotel Artemis is a perfectly serviceable piece of genre entertainment which benefits from Foster’s presence and from a typically extravagant cameo from Goldblum, incongruously cheerful as the ex-hippy turned ruthless criminal boss. The high-kicking Boutella has her moments too. When she garrottes her victims, she has special eye cameras so her clients can watch the moment of death and (a detail we really don’t need) masturbate over it. She is also highly accomplished at martial arts, pickpocketing and in general mendacity.

Day’s Acapulco provides a measure of comic relief. He is a little Napoleon-type weasel boasting incessantly about his wealth, manliness and courage while waiting for a helicopter that never arrives. Waikiki, the square-jawed career criminal who has always put his wastrel brother’s interests above his own, is as close as the film comes to a conventional hero.

Pearce keeps matters brisk. He also manages continually to undercut the most apocalyptic scenes with moments of ironic humour. At times, the plotting becomes wayward. Certain parts of the story don’t stack up at all. An undue emphasis is placed on a stolen pen that contains $80m of hidden diamonds where its ink cartridge should be. The flashbacks showing the Nurse’s son are heavy-handed and some of the final-reel revelations about links between the various characters feel hugely contrived. Nonetheless, the energy levels don’t flag and the always classy Foster almost manages to convince us that her lost little old lady character is, in fact, a full-blown tragic heroine.