Hotel Artemis's reviews
Media reviews
Empire
There are problems: when properly scrutinised, not all the points of conflict hold up (...) and some characters don?t quite get the pay-offs they deserve. But it?s still a thrilling, original film, oozing with style, that deserved far better than its dismal showing at the US box office.
Roger Ebert
Making his directorial debut, screenwriter Drew Pearce is clearly paying homage to that style of filmmaking [Seventies-era exploitation movies like 'Terminal Island' and 'Death Race 2000'] and pulls it off with entertaining, if sometimes awkward results. The screenplay does a nice job of quickly and efficiently establishing the premise and the characters, especially regarding the unexpected connections that pop up between them, and demonstrates a nice sense of wit that helps keep it from being just another relentless gorefest. But there are large chunks that don?t quite work.
Entertainment Weekly
The only thing missing here is (...) a thicker plot. Aside from a series of dappled flashbacks involving Nurse?s long-dead son, most of the story comes down to who will die first, and how. The best bits are in the (literal) execution, particularly Boutella?s bruising, acrobatic fight scenes. The rest is just midnight-movie guts and noise, forgettable but fun.
New York Times
Mr. Pearce is also well-versed in staging and shooting decent action scenes, and building suspense enough to keep 'Hotel Artemis' diverting in its overstuffed ambition. Add to that Ms. Foster?s welcome return to big-screen acting after a five-year layoff and you?ve got a movie almost worth seeing.
Vanity Fair
There?s a lot to like here! Which is why it?s such a shame to watch the movie stumble (...). Undercooked plot mechanics aside, I?m still rooting for this idiosyncratic little film.
The A.V. Club
The Artemis has a rat-maze quality and plenty of concealed doors, and the movie never gives the impression that it knows where all of the characters might be at any given time. Regardless, they?re defined less by where they move than by what they wear on their feet, with close-ups of shoes a recurring a motif.
The Hollywood Reporter
Given the setting, thoughts of 'Blade Runner' are inevitable, but with its ghostly, labyrinthine realm of dimly lighted hallways, 'Hotel Artemis' is more reminiscent of key locations in the L.A.-set 'Drive' (a film that was also scored by [Cliff] Martinez). Within the decorated gloom, its characters get glimpses of hell and of hope. Too often, though, they?re overshadowed by the wall sconces and murals, the industrial decay and flickering lights.
The Guardian
[Drew] Pearce ultimately chooses action and immediacy over drawn-out suspense, a shame given that the film sets up a number of Hitchcockian situations that aren?t squeezed for quite enough juice. Smarts and intrigue give way to lapses in logic and generic fight sequences that segue into a shameless sequel-baiting finale. For all of its faults, there?s still plenty here to praise, the result of so much being thrown at the wall is that some of it will stick.
Vulture
Ultimately, in all its artifice and haphazard but enthusiastic invention, 'Hotel Artemis' makes me a bit nostalgic for French ?90s genre fare of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro and, of course, Luc Besson, embracing their daffiness and dreaminess with an somewhat counterintuitive, almost naïve lack of vanity.
The Washington Post
Too many subplots make the story feel cluttered and no more intelligent.
The Wrap
Though it boasts an agreeably preposterous scenario and a weird mixed bag of physicalities and acting styles ?from [Jodie] Foster and Sterling K. Brown to Jenny Slate and Dave Bautista? the movie is itself an eye-rolling performance of cyber-pulp tropes and pop-movie excesses that undercuts its spotty pleasures at nearly every turn.
Indiewire
It?s a colorful premise, and a dank pastiche of influences that Pearce Frankensteins into a film that feels like too many different things to ever assume a coherent shape of its own. Wedged somewhere between noir grit and cartoon flamboyance [...], this underworld opera lacks the stylistic vision required to thread the need between its various modes. The plot is obvious, the characters archetypical, the dialogue in desperate need of its own voice