User reviews

Abel Ferrara found himself in a MacGyver situation: to improvise a cyberpunk film with a) several very good actors, b) a camcorder, c) an impressive but extremely short and sketchy story by William Gibson, d) futuristic props consisting entirely of a PDA (google it, kids) and a half-bitten circuit board, and e) $600 bucks for expenses.

This is all conjecture on my part, based on nothing more than having seen New Rose Hotel. Can you blame me? After hacking off all the stylistic coir, the story is as such: it's the Future. The most profitable form of industrial espionage is stealing human talent. Two threadbare hijack artists, played by Walken and Dafoe, will lure a brilliant scientist named Hiroshi from Evil Megacorp to Mega Evilcorp. They will use a magnetic temptress that they pick from a squirming Shinjuku flesh pit based on her skill at fellating a karaoke mic.

Asia Argento is the girl – the actress has, the rarity of rarities! not only sex appeal but enough charisma and acting ability to work the part. Unfortunately, the singing is bad, and the songs are bad, and the sexy bar where they are performed is not very sexy at all. While we're at it, the future is not all that futuristic. The sex, of which there is plenty, is made up of cuts, quick pans and motion blur. The seduction and abduction of Hiroshi is talked about exhaustively, but would have been pedestrian even if it didn't entirely take place off-camera.

In brief, the amount of abstraction and suspension required to enjoy – if I may use such a bold term – "New Rose Hotel" hangs some serious lifting on the viewer. Discounting the bland nudity, the only distinct pleasure is watching Christopher Walken's line delivery. The one other actor who gets to do anything of note is his partner in crime, Willem Dafoe; unfortunately, his arc comes down to getting warned severely against falling in love with Argento's character, then falling in love with her like a man taking a headfirst dive on a concrete slab.

Some people have called this movie confusing, but they are dumb. The plot is crystal clear. It's simple as a triangle. Others have called it a boring, flickering mess, which is a much harder charge to beat. You know those "reveal" montages where the main character figures out the horrible secret? They're all made up the same way, with ominous music getting louder in the background, snippets of flashback picked half-second at a time from various parts of the movie, and key lines of dialogue played over and over, with an echo effect added on top.

The entire movie plays like one of those. A relatively simple story is packed inside a fifteen-layered rebus of headache, eyestrain and tinnitus as you squint to figure out what's on screen. If this is how the regular narrative plays, then as a parting fillip, the entire last half hour of the movie is made up of an actual flashback montage as one of the characters, soon to be found and killed by his enemies, is reliving past mistakes and pleasures in a dinky hotel room.

Some have complained about this sequence because it goes on for about 20 minutes after even the densest of us have figured out every plot secret. I think they're missing the point – the scene isn't a reveal, but the fevered, looping memories of a man who's about to kick off the chair. As such, it has a good deal of pathos. However, in the end, it's not really all that interesting, good-looking or original. And way, way too long.

The central question of New Rose Hotel is as follows: is there any reason at all to watch this dizzy 90-minute montage, when you could read the original short story in 15 minutes? None, actually. Unless you are enough of a stim addict to prefer watching any sort of dull video to reading any kind of engaging prose.

New Rose Hotel captures the bleakness and despair of the short story that seems common to William Gibson's writing. I enjoyed the performances of Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe and the babe was sufficiently babeish to hold my interest though her acting was just OK. The movie peaked too soon and the flashbacks to the film's beginning were too long and repetitious. The short story didn't have enough depth to fill out the movie. William Gibson is heavy on description and atmosphere, a master at it. "Neuromancer", his best book, is enthralling even if you don't know what is happening. The screenplay for the movie should have been padded out more in the beginning maybe showing some history of X and some of the babe's motivations clearer. The story was somewhat obscure. If you didn't listen carefully you missed the plot. The movie was flawed but atmospheric and moody enough to be of interest. William Gibson's fans should see it to see how the book's mood was captured.

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

It's hard to believe that a movie directed by Abel Ferrara based on a story by William Gibson and starring Christopher Walken, Willem Dafoe and Asia Argento would be anything less than great, but this movie is just OK. It has a lot of moody atmosphere. Asia A., the lovely Eurobabe who is supposedly ogre-ish horror-meister Dario Argento's daughter (I, for one, won't believe it until I see the blood tests), spends most of the movie in various states of undress (unfortunately, so does Dafoe). Walken is great as always. But literally nothing happens. It's all atmosphere, eerie music, and occasional bursts of softcore groping. Neither Ferrara's visuals, Walken's acting presence, or Argento's tatooed nether regions can ultimately carry a film so totally devoid of conventional plot, suspense, or action. Not a bad film, just a disappointing one.

I'm a big Gibson fan, a big Walken fan, a big Dafoe fan, Asia Argento ain't bad to look at, and here is my favorite illustrator, Amano, in his only film appearance. Wow! I was real excited to find out this short story had been made into a movie with such a great cast.

After seeing it, it's no wonder I'd never heard of it all this time. It just stinks.

Walken is really the only thing carrying the movie at all. The other characters are all unlikeable and easily forgettable. Dafoe is a silly caricature. Argento can't act worth a damn. Amano has no lines.

The plot is fairly straight-forward, but for some reason the director decided to abruptly end the movie about two-thirds of the way through, and then replay the whole thing over again in a series of unnecessary flashbacks inter-spliced with what would be included as deleted scenes on the modern day DVD.

I really wanted to like this movie, but there's just nothing there except for one of Walken's canned sociopath characters (although well done) and Argento's boobs, which are exposed so many times by the end of the movie, I actually got bored of seeing them. Too bad.

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.

This is a decent Abel Ferrara movie,with Walken turning in another memorable performance.I figure any movie with Walken's name listed in the credits first is worth watching.It did feel like the most important scenes were not filmed, and the rehashing of earlier scenes in the third act is really tedious. Overall, I think this movie would have been great with a bigger budget, but as it stands, I'd only recommend this to Walken fans.

Truly dreadful, slow, boring. Couldn't care less about the characters or the (nonexistent) plot. You must have read the Gibson short story to have any clue what your emotions should be.

Zero special effects, zero character development, zero cinematography, zero interesting anything (well, nude Asia Argento was okay). And the last act simply rehashes the dreck you've already experienced.

This thing looks like a film made by a 14 year old on his Mac. It makes Johnny Mnenonic look like Lawrence of Arabia. How *did* this "movie" get made?

At least there was one laugh: the shaky image projected onto a palm pilot, trying to make it look like some future device. Was that really supposed to be believable? Sheesh.

Stay away.

This movie seem to go all out for the ambience of what it could be like in the near future, giving us a look of the cold and bleak world that is set out for us. It doesn't quite succeed like in Blade Runner, probably due to its small budget, limited settings, which were mostly indoors, but it gave it a good run for the money.

On the plot side, I think it might have been better if the flashback method of the original story were used. This will avoid the replay of the first 2/3 of the film onto the final 1/3. Plus it would have also lead us to see how X (William Dafoe), being a person who frequents high caliber hotels all over the world, ended up in a porta-crypt.

Also, there seem to be too many ambiguous plot lines or cues that's either meaningless or completely open to interpretation. What's the significance of the tattoo on Sandii's (Asia Argento) belly? Was her deception both ways toward X? If it was, it was not implied at the end.

Christopher Walken, William Dafeo were both good in the film, with Walken putting his quirky improvisations to his character and Dafeo serious and troubled as usual. The surprise was Asia Argento, who's sultry performance proves that not all non English speaking actresses has to act as if they are reading lines like the way Penelope Cruz does.

Overall, a satisfactory film, giving a good visual and feel, but not dense enough in plot to make complete sense or to fill out the 90 minutes the movie takes.

What more could Abel Ferrara ask for: acerbic Christopher Walken, inscrutable Willem Defoe, hot Asia Argento channeling Cat Power, Schoolly D laying beats. Dynamite. Unfortunately, Abe couldn't find the fuse. A dud.

The opening credits, in three different languages like a DSLR instruction manual (German, Chinese, and English), are accompanied by Schoolly D's great soundtrack, the best part of the movie.

Asia, the heroine, is of the kinky persuasion, a denizen of dark underground group gropes. Shades of Jack Smith and Andy Warhol.

The dialog is nonsense like an uninteresting Little Steven's Underground Garage. Someone needs to tell Abel that gangsters spouting philosophy doesn't work. Godard tried and bored us to tears. Like Jean-Luc, Ferrara stretches his scenes interminably with dialog that made its point after the first two lines but for reasons that can only relate to stretching to meet a budget goes on forever. Gangster films are about, as Sam Fuller famously said, emotion and violence, not long interludes of one thief pitching a caper to another.

Abel is a consummate hustler, his packages find big money, but wind up garbage. It's not as if the movie ran out of ideas early on and the director had to pad it to deliver the requisite hour and a half to meet his business commitment, the movie has no ideas. "New Rose Hotel" serves only one purpose, as an investment loss to a tax write off. The last 20 minutes rehash scenes already shot, as if the director had run out of production money and had to make up the time in post-production. Thus the movie is in two parts: the first part bad, the second part, a rehash of the first, worse.

A low brow effort with high brow pretensions clearly beyond the director's capabilities. Abel, stick to street punks.

In summary, the best part Schoolly D. (See the extra on Schoolly D from the DVD of "The King of New York." It's better than the feature.)

It looks like Willem Dafoe and Christopher Walken had fun making this, and they turn in fine performances. When do they not, right? Asia Argento is good too, though Abel Ferrara was a little excessive in how often he had her writhing around erotically. His storytelling was also a mixed bag. I liked how he didn't fill in all the details and had the plot simply jump forward from time to time, but it seemed like a little bit more of it should have been fleshed out. The final twenty minutes have one of the characters reliving how things went wrong, which was unique and imparted that haunting feeling many of us have while experiencing profound regret, but it did get to feeling like too much of a rehash, especially since the truth remained elusive. Polished up a bit this could have been a real gem, but it's not so bad as it is.

I really wanted to like this movie. I mean Abel Ferrara shooting a William Gibson story with Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe? That sounds awesome!

Just five minutes in however I knew that "New Rose Hotel" was not going to be a good film. By the 20 minute mark, I had come to realize that it wasn't just not good, it is actually a really bad film trying hard to look smart. After that, the only thing that kept me watching was a sort of morbid curiosity. Like how much worse it could it possibly get? Well my lord does it all come together into an astoundingly mess.

First off, the writing is simply inexcusable. The intro scene in the apartment in particular has really stilted dialog and is basically just Christopher Walken telling us: here's the world, here's who I am, and here's the plot of this here film. How do you manage to shoot such a horrible scene with Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe!

The sets and clothing would feel more at home in a 90s sitcom than in a cyberpunk film. It all feels cheap, and not in a enduring way either: cheap filming, cheap editing, cheap acting, cheap effects, cheap writing. A video of Christopher Walken in a bathrobe reading the original Gibson story would be way better than this.

I love trash 90s films but this one has not held up well. Not that it was ever a good film. "New Rose Hotel" would have been bad even it were just a 90s made TV movie shot by a nobody with no-name actors. But the fact that this film has so much potential yet is such an incompetent and boring mess cements this as perhaps the greatest waste I've come across in recent memory. Only watch this if you are a film student who wants to learn what not to do in a movie.

After reading a number of reviews at imdb--and elsewhere--I have to come-down-on-the-side of the director, Abel Ferrera's

vision. This is a GREAT science-fiction film, and for those who are

generally-disappointed with it, I have to ask whether they

understand what sci-fi IS. If science-fiction isn't about the present

(as-filtered through an imagined-future), it generally isn't good, but

New Rose Hotel fits this criteria. This is a pretty-old story from the

80s that Gibson had published in "Omni Magazine," it might-have

been his first-acceptance. While it is a minor-story, it has

dramatic-elements to it that are very-pleasing within-the-structure

of the "Ferrera" universe: a metropolitan-dystopia, urban and

moral-decay, the eternal quest by many for "power," official- corruption, the consequences of murder, sexuality, drugs, how

memory works, they all mesh-well with Ferrera's thematic-styles.

There are no great moral-lessons here, this is about the aftermath

of that paradigm. The only-complaint I have is that the future has

caught-up a bit, due to the age of the original-story. With our

human-society growing more-restrictive, with the rise of corporate- statism, and the subsequent-decline of the Nation State, New

Rose Hotel seems almost "quaint." That should give-us-pause.

Corporate raiders use any trick conceivable to lure a genius into their fold...oh, and to win.

This was a rambling and unfocused tale with some mildly interesting plot elements, which suffer completely convoluted execution. Other than some nice camera angles and lighting details, there is nothing at all to redeem this work.

Not even Christopher Walken's wonderful performance could save this flop. Willem Dafoe comes close, but no cigar. I suppose it may be worth watching for their performances, but you surely have to be a connoisseur to derive a moment's pleasure, even from that. OH, they're good, don't get me wrong, but the screenplay is horrid. Simply horrid.

All in all? Don't bother.

It rates a 0.7/10 from...

the Fiend :.

The ONLY reason I rented it was to up my quota of Chris films seen (I'm now around 70-some, in case you were interested), and after renting it and turning it on, I still really can't say that I've seen it. I saw the first twenty minutes, when I was actually paying attention to the screen, but then I decided to take a nap, set my alarm, and went to sleep with the movie droning in the background. Yea, it was pretty bad. I should've know...despite starring Chris, Willem Dafoe, and Asia Argento, it WAS directed by Abel Ferrara, and boy, can i not stand that guy. I've never seen a movie of his that I liked...even King of New York, which boasts one of Chris's best performances. Oh well, I'll stop talking about it now, since I've nothing to say, and no rating to give...only a warning...don't see this movie (oh, unless you want to see Asia Argento take her clothes off, every couple of minutes, for the span of the movie).

As much as I like Abel's works, this is one of his weakest. Almost as if trying to ride on the coat tails of Wim Wenders 'Until The End Of The World' sans narrative to make it more mysterious. It works and doesn't work, ala Blade Runner. Had there been a voice over to explain things a bit better, and a version without - I think this movie could've fared much better in reception. As it stands, the viewer has to piece together the characters from scratch. Fox and X (Walken and Dafoe) start off as a couple of seemingly sleazy sex purveyors at a lurid club. X is attracted to and beds Sandi (Argento), whom Fox makes an offer to as he intrudes on them in the morning. Tempt this brilliant Japanese scientist whose living like a rock star already into falling for her, and follow her wherever she may go. Fox and X have been planning this for a year, and have personal footage of the scientist's interests and perversions. Sandi accepts the challenge, and Fox wants X to make her irresistible. Where the movie goes off the rails is that we never see Sandi with the scientist. It skips time to where she returns to report to Fox and X how everything is going. She's won him over, caused him to leave his wife and is totally wrapped around her finger. Fox is more than elated with this, and plans to set the scientist up in Marrakesh, and let the rival corporation know he has him - but for a large sum of money. X and Sandi try to continue their relationship, but are now both scared that with this scientist lured away and the money involved, things could get dangerous. And without giving spoilers away - things go very bad, very quickly! And the remainder of the movie is essentially X trying to piece it all together what and who went wrong? Without any clear conclusion other than what the viewer can construed. Who was the double crosser? Was Sandi in on it well before X even saw her? Did Fox push it too far? Or were they all so naive to think it was going to be a easy relocation? The movie is based on a short story by 'cyber punk' author William Gibson. I had bought the French special edition of this movie, which does include the original story with the movie, which I haven't read yet. And maybe advisable to do so before diving into the movie cold? The cast play their parts well, as mysterious as they all seem to be. But any subtleties of looks or pertinent dialog never come to full fruition. Are they aware of certain things - or just suspicious? And as X says so blatantly approaching the climax "I'm sorry, I'm just confused" Aren't we all after this mess?

It may seem like I am just throwing words out there with the summary line above. In reality ... well it sort of is true. But there is meaning behind this. And if you ever wondered, if Dafoe and Walken did a movie together ... well wonder no more. Although to be honest and just to be sure you won't be too dissapointed, do not set your hopes too high.

While they never can fully fail at anything, this rather feels a bit like a letdown. If you are drawn in this because of Asia Argento, you may see things differently. No pun intended, nudity on the other hand, seems more than intended.

I have not read the story this is based on, which is supposed to be really good. This also allegedly is a bit of a watered down version of what was in that story. Not sure if the Science Fiction left in (for the movie) is sufficient to make this appealing to you.

Overall decent, but not as manic as any other interview Abel Ferrara is giving. The man is ... well he is quite the character. For better or worse - I imagine he has done things to people (under the influence or not), that others would get into a lot of trouble ... but we are talking about his movies and not him as a person (as in judging his art, rather than him) ...

New Rose Hotel (1998) is a movie that I recently watched on Amazon Prime. The storyline follows two men with plans for revenge and robbery and they believe a recent call girl they've encountered is the final piece to their master plan. As they work closer together relationships are both strengthened and weakened. As the plans unfold the strength of those bonds will determine their success.

This movie is directed by Abel Ferrara (King of New York) and stars Christopher Walken (Dead Zone), Willem Dafoe (Spider-Man), Asia Argento (xXx), Annabella Sciorra (Jungle Fever), Victor Argo (Raw Deal) and Gretchen Mol (Boardwalk Empire).

This cast and storyline had so much potential. Everyone delivers an outstanding performance and Walken and Dafoe play off each other perfectly. I also enjoyed Argento's evolution as the movie unfolds. Unfortunately, the plot is very predictable and everything happens exactly as you think it will. The twists at the end you see coming and the outcome is unfortunate but straightforward. I did think the dialogue was well written, the chemistry between cast was authentic and the circumstances relatively realistic.

Overall, this is a very average movie that's not very memorable. I would score this a 5/10 and only recommend it if nothing better is available.

What on earth was that... creepy characters, weird dialogue, strange filmmakers bothered and probably a strange script writer as well.

The ratings aren't too bad, but they aren't good either. And why bother showing nudity if you are going to make the lighting so poor with it all? Didn't make sense. Too dark, too weak a script and not very well executed as they'd have hoped for.

Anyway, Defoe etc big cast in this but they fail because the scenes are too weak. They are moments when they show a bit of class but this wasnt met with the same energy. All in all quite a rotten movie really. It's a shame given the talent.

Although New Rose Hotel isn't perfect, it's my favourite adaption of Gibson's work to the screen, even more so than the episodes of The X-Files that he co-wrote. I actually really like the structure of this film. It's just like remembering an intense event in real life. The key parts keep coming back over and over, but are a little different each time because it's in your mind. My only real complaint is that (like all of Ferrara's work that I've seen) the ending seems too quick and unsatisfying. As for Gibson's feelings on the film, I took part in an interview with the man himself right before the premier at the 1998 Vancouver Film Festival. Here's how he described it: "[The cinematography] is very beautiful." "It's amazingly close to the original short story. I can't think of too many films that are as true to the material, and consequently it's a very dark and somewhat claustrophobic experience."