Here's how I discovered this film. I'm channel surfing on my direct TV and see a title for a movie I've never heard of called 'The New Rose Hotel' I press the info button and it list the stars: Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe, Asia Argento. To myself I say 'hmmm.... How come I've never heard of this movie?' The description goes something like this: 'Two corporate spies use an innocent ingénue to lure a scientist into defecting.' Okay, sounds interesting I say to myself. The last line of the info stated: Directed by Abel Ferrara. Whoa, I say, The Bad Lieutenant, King of New York, Invasion of the Body Snatchers Abel Ferrara? Being a relative film fan, I am again curious why I've never heard of this movie.

I never heard of it because it sucked.

But I'm jumping ahead of myself. The movie is based of a short story by noted SciFi writer William Gibson (Who is brilliant, but the powers that be have yet found out how to translate his vision to film) As is stated above, the movie centers around the Dafoe and Walken characters, who in an ambiguous future 'steal people'. They are corporate saboteurs who steal hot commodities from one entity and transfer them to another, higher paying entity. The commodity they hope to steal is Hiroshi, a brilliant geneticist who the Hosaka Corporation covet greatly. Problem is, he under constant surveillance and protection. How to get him out?

The Dafoe character is seeing a woman named Sandii, played by the near physically perfect (at that time) Asia Argento. Even though her exact vocation is again wrapped in ambiguity, we are to assume that she is a prostitute. The Walken character sees an opportunity in Sandii. Because of her beauty and apparent innocence they will train her to learn Hiroshi, he will subsequently fall in love with her, thus abandoning his job and his family to follow her to the ends of the earth. At first Sandii hesitates, but with the promise of a cool million, she soon relents. Dafoe, despite the warnings of Walken, has fallen in love with Sandii. Hard. But there is a job to do and he is able to release her to do her task, with the assurance that they will be together once it's complete.

The plan goes like clockwork. Hiroshi disappears with Sandii, is placed in the care of the Hosaka Corporation, Dafoe and Walken get there promised 100 mill. Then something awful happens, Hiroshi and all of the brightest Hosaka scientist end up dead due to a deadly saboteur. Sandii is missing and the Hosaka assume Dafoe and Walken double crossed them. Walken ends up dead and Dafoe is hiding out at a seedy place called the New Rose Hotel, seeing now that he has been betrayed by his beloved. Sold out for a better deal.

End of Movie, right? Not so fast my friend. There's still forty five minutes left to go. And these last forty minutes or so consist of Dafoe, sitting alone in a room, masturbating (seriously), while rehashing in flashback the first hour of a pretty slow moving, if highly stylized movie. When the movie finally ends, your left thinking 'What the heck just happened? What was that junk?' Because nothing is made even remotely clear. I watched the first hour, a little bewildered, but not totally put off because it seems as if the story was leading somewhere, and I watched the last half in a total state of confusion. When the credits rolled, I said to myself, 'self, you've got to be kidding.'

A word to the wise though if you have seen the movie or still plan to see the movie. I took it upon myself to read the short story (8 pages or so) soon after I saw this film as many have said if you don't read the story the movie will make little sense. If you wish to do the same here is a link to it.

http://lib.ru/GIBSON/hotel.txt

Reading the story after seeing movie was like turning on a light. Reading it before viewing would probably have been even better. All of the murkiness and confusion of the film suddenly made total sense, because the Gibson story is extremely well written, taut, and very, very short. Everything that was in the SHORT story, even a lot of the dialog, was in the movie. After an hour, Ferrara simply couldn't stretch it any further. There was no where else to go except spend the next forty minutes rehashing the first hour, which I assumed the producers thought that looking at Asia Argento's naked body over and over again would alleviate the agony of having to do just that. It didn't help. Yeah there was a lot nudity in the movie, and at the age of fifteen I might have been willing to suffer through two hours of this junk to see an occasional breast, but at thirty five my time is far too valuable.

The short story also exposes what I think is the critical flaw of an overall poorly done film. Aside from the lack of material, the whole movie hinges on the deceit of the Argento character. You had to believe that she was the smartest person in the film, but she didn't come off as nearly that. When she was telling lies, she has to sell you on her ability to be slight of hand but clever enough to keep anyone from perceiving it, but instead she simply seemed slow and confused. What did Dafoe see in her that totally blinded him of her true intent? Other than a great rack, in a movie filled with great racks, it's hard to tell.

I felt the movie was nicely filmed and had decent atmosphere though some of the picture in a picture special effects were pretty cheesy, but definitely not a downfall. Christopher Walken was Walkenesque as usual and I find him worth watching in just about anything.

If you're a fifteen year old boy, tell your folks it's a sci-fi flick like Star-Wars and then lock your door. Otherwise, I advise you to avoid.