New Rose Hotel (1999)
Movie Info
Watch it now
Cast
as Fox
as X
as Hiroshi's Wife
as Madame Rosa
as Sandii
as Hiroshi
as Distinguished Man
as Hosaka Executive
Critic Reviews for New Rose Hotel
All Critics (16) | Top Critics (3) | Fresh (3) | Rotten (13)
Masterfully constructed and yet eventually rather wearisome.
Uh, no.
One wonders what this cast could have done had they been given some real material to work with.
A big mess.
A major misfire from one of my favorite directors.
The movie works, thanks to Walken's and DaFoe's hardcore performances.
Audience Reviews for New Rose Hotel
New Rose Hotel, I admit, is not actually a good movie (though it is). It lacks in dramatic tension and in substance, material. Why do some rate it up then? I do so for the style and the acting. I think you have to be a fan of Walken, Defoe, literature, noir, and enjoy looking at Argento red lit to be able to rate this one up.
Super Reviewer
New Rose Hotel is a great looking, stylish film, carefully shot and wonderfully acted by Walken and Dafoe, but I have never in my life seen a movie that goes so far out of its way to go absolutely nowhere. We're given a long setup explaining the details of Fox and X's plan to basically steal a scientist and sell him to a rival company. The last forty minutes however does almost nothing with this narrative. Various events which cause the plan to deteriorate are referenced secondhand, and the story mostly then just descends into overlong conversations that rehash portions of what we've already seen. At the same time the film also tries to thrust X and Sandii's lukewarm romance into the forefront when it has nothing to do with the main narrative, since there really aren't any further implications of their involvement (or lack of) with one another. This was very much a wasted opportunity to create a dramatic, work of sci-fi art.
Super Reviewer
Hypermedia spy story -- "What is real in the world? What/who can I trust?" -- is actually a thin veil for a doomed romance story: "Is my love real or an illusion? And BTW, could virtue, mine or maybe hers, have saved me from illusion?" Unlike Alphaville, I never get the flickering sense that this world, jerryrigging pieces of the present to represent the future, is a real place. Instead, this move plays like vignettes in an off-Broadway play about the future, with monitors showing tinted surveillance footage next to the stage. Walken creates a real, whole character out of verbal pirouettes around cliches; Dafoe is more than believable in the mute, physical acting required by a sustained flashback montage; and Argento is more of an underwritten cipher than she is mysterious. Her part in the con, as a surefire seductress, we have to take on faith. With the elliptical editing and blacked-out backgrounds, they could stuff anything in the plot, but they don't. The fact that the movie stays together, as does Walken and Dafoe's goldminers' pact, keeps things intriguing enough. We want to know exactly how everybody is going to commit suicide by Fate.
Super Reviewer
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