Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe say some lines about being freelance corporate spies. Normally, I would name the characters (Fox and X in this case) and write that they were freelance corporate spies, but that would imply that there are characters in this movie. There aren’t. Walken comes up with a pseudo-plan to get a research scientist to switch companies by tossing a hot prostitute at him (Asia Argento). Dafoe agrees, but whines a lot because he says he’s in love with her. He doesn’t act like he loves her (I’m talking about Dafoe, not X), but he does recite lines indicating that he does. The plan goes off perfectly (well, I assume it does because we don’t see it; we just see Walken and Dafoe hanging out in hotel rooms and bars), but then things fall apart. Dafoe finds himself in a Japanese coffin hotel dwelling on what went wrong. Hmmmm. Let’s see: Only three people have more than four lines in the film, and we know that Walken didn’t betray Dafoe (a scene makes that clear), so who could be the traitor? Three people. It can’t be Dafoe because he’s doing the thinking and it can’t be Walken. Hmmmmm. Who could it be? Tricky. Since director Abel Ferrara isn’t good with math, he assumes we’ll never figure it out, so we’re presented with 20 minutes of flashbacks (in a 90 minute movie!!) to clear up this vast mystery.
It’s not a clever idea to make a Cyberpunk movie and leave out the “cyber” part. That only leave the “punk,” and New Rose Hotel doesn’t even have a lot of that. It has few characters, almost no outdoor scenes, and not much plot. So what does it have? Flashbacks. Yeah, if you like flashbacks, and I’m talking about flashbacks of scenes you’ve already watched, then you’re going to be in heaven. And if you enjoy rewatching scenes that were unnecessary and really, really dull the first time, then WOW! I mean WOW!! You’re going to absolutely love this film. Yeah, this is THE flashback movie.
I’d rather have ignored that this is a Cyberpunk movie, because it isn’t one, but I can’t. Every list puts it in the genre. I’ve never heard anyone speak about New Rose Hotel without using the term at least once. It’s based on a short story by William Gibson (Johnny Mnemonic), the father of literary Cyberpunk, and does contain conflict between powerful multinational corporations. But I can’t even tell if the movie takes place in the future (which is pertinent in a science fiction sub-genre). It might. Nothing looks futuristic, and we’re given only a couple of brief stock footage shots of cityscapes. The story (if it deserves that title) is set in old bars and hotel rooms, so who knows what year it is supposed to be. The scientist’s research sounds sci-fi, but we’re not told enough to make that clear. Perhaps the best way to classify New Rose Hotel is to say it is a three person non-character study based on a work of literary Cyberpunk.
OK, I’ve dealt with its pedigree. Let’s get back to its sucking. We see none of the important events. Nothing. Fox trains Sandii the prostitute on how to pick up the scientist, but that happens off screen. Sandii does pick him up, but all we see is a text message. When people die in the lab, there’s a few seconds of a grainy security cam picture. That’s it. What the movie focuses on is Fox and X talking, and occasionally them talking to Sandii. None of them have anything interesting to say. The conversations don’t develop their characters nor do they advance a plot. It’s just chatter. Walken is a master at delivering dialog in an entertaining fashion, but he’s given nothing to work with. He’s far too “wacky” for the nothing he’s spouting, but what could the poor man do? Well, I guess he could have followed Dafoe’s lead—he’s in somnambulist mode. As for Asia Argento, she’s a beauty, but I’m not sure she knew what the words she was saying meant. She’s not a native English speaker, and it shows. I don’t mean that she appears to be playing a character who’s English is poor. No, I mean as an actress, she’s sounding things out phonetically, and can’t quite work out what her part is. She does bare her breasts and show off her impressive winged tattoo, but since that’s all the movie has to offer, might I suggest buying a poster of her.
Yeah, there’s much sucking, but at least for the first sixty-five minutes it is a movie. It’s a bad, cheap-looking, amateurish, dull movie, but it is a movie. Then it ends. It runs out of what little story it has; you know, the story it doesn’t show onscreen. But the film keeps going. It’s time for 20 minutes of flashbacks (20 minutes for God’s sake!). X dreamingly dwells on the events we just suffered through, and we get to see them again. Oh boy, conversations that put me to sleep the first time are back. There’s a few new scenes (of things we already knew about), and it’s all mixed with shots of Dafoe flopped on the floor, but mainly it is exactly what was shown before and wasn’t worth seeing once.
People, people, is this really the way to make a movie? Was there brain damage involved in the planning stage? Even technically the project is a mess. The picture is grainy, looking like it was shot on super-eight or a cheap video camera. The lighting and contrast are off so you can’t make out faces in the clubs and all the color is washed out the few times anyone enters the light. But why worry about basic filmmaking skill when talent is so lacking.