Hotel Artemis

Hotel Artemis is not your run of the mill thriller; kudos to Drew Pearce for the original script.  Set in the near future, Los Angles is being torn by riots.  In the middle of the chaos we  find The Hotel Artemis.  No longer a hotel, The Artemis has become a high end hospital for criminals.  As long as you keep your dues up to date, you can enter anytime  you are injured in the course of your nefarious activities. If you haven’t kept your dues in order, Everest the Orderly (Dave Bautista) will ‘gently’ help you off the premises. The Nurse (JodiFoster) uses state-of-the-art diagnostics and nano technolgy to treat her patients, who are lodged in rooms named after exotic locales.  You are welcome to stay as long as you need, as long as you follow the rules, which include “no killing each other.”  This and other rules are enforced by Everest the Orderly.  Things are going along fairly well, in spite of the riots outside the Hotel, until the owner, The Wolf King (Jeff Goldblum) is rushed in for emergency surgery, aided and abetted by his bad seed son (Zachary Quinto), and the wheels start coming off.  The Nurse makes things worse by taking in a wounded cop (a SERIOUS violation of the rules) connected to a distracting side story. The superb cast also includes Sterling K. Brown, Sophia Boutella and Charlie Day.  Now for the bad news.  Hotel Artemis just isn’t as interesting or as entertaining as I thought it would be.  The action lagged;  Jodi Foster’s Nurse’s  side story concerns her deceased son and wasn’t necessary.  It really took away from the rest of the story.   I wanted to see more of the day to day runnning and organization of this hospital.  Drew Pearce had such an original idea, I wish he would have really ran with it more.  This movie gets a very mixed review from me.  Two thumbs up for the creative premise and the brilliant cast, but two thumbs down for the execution and direction.