Dave from Ottawa
The film never creates the tense, doom-laden atmosphere of William Gibson's short story about corporate espionage in a grim near-future setting, leaving the viewer to spend a numbing hour and half with unheroic and uninteresting characters doing not much of anything. The original story had little in the way of plot as well. It did, however, have a great overlying menace, set in a world where cutthroat corporate Gestapos kill to protect the technology they control. Here you only get a vague hint of that for the first ten minutes, at which point the film settles into a slice-of-lowlife study of its downbeat characters and loses all forward momentum. Watch DEMONLOVER instead for a similar story done right.
Victor Popov
This is a movie for movie-lovers. For those of you tired of commercial crap this movie is mostly intelligent dialog. Christopher Walkin and Willem Dafoe compliment each other wonderfully and I wish I could see em on screen together again!!! Its basically about 3 rogues in an everyman for himself future and corporate espionage. 2 partners Dafoe and Walkin are bent on stealing one scientist from one company and selling him to another. 1 problem... They don't even know the guy!!! The plan is simple throw in a beautiful woman to seduce him and make him join the other company. I think this is an awesome movie and I am a harsh critic.
Joseph P. Ulibas
New Rose Hotel (1998) was another strange film from Abel Ferrara. Instead of his usual street dramas. Ferrara expands upon the elements that he utilized whilst making BLACKOUT. A dark and moody film that was adapted from a short story that was written by William Gibson. I was surprised by how intriguing and interesting the movie was. I have heard so many negative things about this production that I was a little leery in watching it. But I was impressed by the story, acting and directing.Christopher Walken and Wilhem Dafoe are two losers who are always looking for rich people to swindle. One day they find the perfect pigeon who'll make them a lot of money. But they need a seductress. They find one in Asia Argento (who's smoking hot in this movie). During the bug hustle, Dafoe falls for her and the two make a side swindle. Unfortunately nothing is really as it seems. Instead of running off with Asia, Dafoe tries to play all sides but he winds up with nothing. Before he can split, his mentor Walken kills himself before the hit men can ice him. Dafoe realizes that he's be burned by a better con artist and flees. Hiding from everyone, Dafoe spends the rest of his pathetic life hiding out in a derelict apartment complex The New Rose Hotel where he re-lives the last month of his life over and over until he ends it all.Even though we never see what happens to Dafoe's character, one can assume what happens to him. He has nowhere to go but inside the coffin he's created. The movie is a serious character study about not knowing what you could have and how greed and stupidity make a dangerous combination. I found this movie to be very deep and moving as well. But it's not for everyone.Highly recommended.
VisionThing
With a solid plot basis (William Gibson short story), two excellent actors (Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe) and an interesting director (Abel Ferrara) this movie could have well turned out to be a real hidden gem. Dario Argento's daughter posing as the female lead doesn't have any other qualification for her role than an Italian accent and a nice body -- no screen presence, no femme fatale charisma, no "edge" -- and the budget has obviously been someone's lunch money for a week, but those things alone would not have done too much damage. However, there are some bigger issues with this film.In the beginning of the movie there's way too much singing in the bars, and it's all bad. I've been to karaoke bars where the performers have been significantly more talented. All of them. No kidding. And near the end the movie falls apart, mainly thanks to way too many flashbacks -- they are not of just one or two key scenes, but of umpteen, in a peculiar "here's the movie again in case you missed it" fashion. They are annoying as such, and as a result you probably lose your focus and, consequently, your grasp of the plot. What you end up having instead of a real movie is a 90 minutes long artsy collection of insubstantial sleazy moving pictures with nudity.In short, the first half of the movie does not get your hopes up too high, yet the latter half is disappointing. Kind of an achievement, I suppose. For better or worse, Walken's cool charisma and Argento's numerous nude scenes may still keep you awake through the whole thing. 4/10
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