CHECK OUT ANY TIME YOU PLEASE
You won’t love your stay at the Hotel Artemis
If you’re looking for a hotel in downtown Los Angeles, might we recommend one that probably will get mixed reviews on TripAdvisor? It has atrocious turndown service and few amenities, but the on-site medical care is startlingly good.
This is the Hotel Artemis, where wealthy and forward-thinking criminals come for first-rate therapeutic treatment if they’ve been badly shot, knifed or horribly mutilated. As long as they’re a fully paid up member, they’re welcome. (That’s right: You can check out any time you like, but you don’t have to really leave).
This premise animates Hotel Artemis, a sci-fi thriller that offers us a look at what Jodie Foster might look like as a little old lady and what Sterling K. Brown can look like when he’s a gunslinging action hero and not perpetually unsure like he is on NBC’s This is Us.
Good as these two are, they can’t conceal the fact that writer/ director Drew Pearce’s directorial debut is uneven. He lacks a consistent tone, stunts some potential storylines and kicks out a bunch of clichés. Then, clearly unable to find a rational way to end his film, he adds two doses of nonsensical ultraviolence.
But until then, the premise he’s spun is intriguing. Foster plays an alcoholic, shut-in, one-time trauma doctor who for the past 22 years has stitched up criminals in the heavily protected 12th floor penthouse of the Hotel Artemis. She goes by Nurse and, you guessed it, there’s tragedy in her past. In exchange for medical care, the criminals who come to the Artemis promise not to kill each other or be rude to the help.
The film takes place one summer night in 2028, when the streets are filled with rioters angered by water shortages. Two bank-robbing brothers (Brown and Brian Tyree Henry) knock on the door needing urgent care, a slinky assassin (Sofia Boutella) has arrived with a secret agenda and a smarmy arms dealer (Charlie Day) is recuperating.
Plus the Wolfking (Jeff Goldblum), the most dangerous mobster in town, also wants in.
None of these characters will be the same after an eventful night, but they remain cartoony, except for Brown, who manages real pathos, and Foster, who shuffles about under lots of prosthetics.
She has some of the best lines, including “This is America, honey. Eighty-five per cent of what I fix is bullet wounds.”
But if a nice bed is what you’re after in L.A. and you’re not in need of life-saving care, I suggest an early check out from the Artemis.