Hotel Artemis
Jodie Foster plays nurse in a futuristic private LA hospital from hell.
Sterling K. Brown and Sofia Boutella
Los Angeles, ten years hence, and the place is a hellhole of the worst riots the city has ever known, on account of the privatisation of water. Crime is rife and, as the bullets fly in all directions, it’s not only the man or woman in the street who gets clobbered, but also the criminal fraternity at large are being picked off too. The eponymous haven of rest is a well-established private health facility set up by the Wolf King, the city’s most notorious gangster, for criminal members only. It’s run by Jean Thomas, aka The Nurse (Jodie Foster), along with her sidekick orderly, Everest (Dave Bautista), named on account of his height but in fact he’s more disorderly when dealing with the encroaching mobsters.
The Nurse is an aging agoraphobic dipsomaniac with a neat line in surgery and is especially nifty at patching up bullet holes when the hoods come calling, thereby bypassing the need to involve the police or regular doctors. Foster ages up to granny status as The Nurse, perfecting an old lady, small-step walk that looks like a geisha girl or one of those home-help robots that now threaten our daily lives.
Patients are dealt with anonymously as they assume the name of the hotel room in which they are staying. As bank robber ‘Waikiki’ Sterling K. Brown exudes a certain bullish charm, and as his brother, fellow felon ‘Honolulu’, Bryan Tyree Henry gloats over knocking off a diamond-encrusted pen worth millions. As international assassin Nice (it’s pronounced Neese, she claims) Sofia Boutella kicks her way out of trouble clad in a long red dress and bovver boots, as if she’s come straight off a catwalk.
Writer and debut director Drew Pearce creates a more than credible dystopian Los Angeles landscape with some good ’n’ bloody action sequences. He also keeps us guessing as to who the star victim of the riots will turn out to be when he arrives at Hotel Artemis seeking treatment. The real name of Mr ‘Niagara’ is omitted here to protect the guilty.
MICHAEL DARVELL
Cast: Jodie Foster, Sterling K. Brown, Sofia Boutella, Bryan Tyree Henry, Jenny Slate, Zachary Quinto, Dave Bautista, Charlie Day.
Dir Drew Pearce, Pro Simon Cornwell, Stephen Cornwell, Marc Platt and Adam Siegel, Screenplay Drew Pearce, Ph Chung-hoon Chung, Pro Des Ramsey Avery, Ed Gardner Gould and Paul Zucker, M Cliff Martinez, Costumes Lisa Lovaas.
The Ink Factory/Marc Platt Productions/127 Wall-Warner Bros.
94 mins. USA. 2018. Rel: 20 July 2018. Cert. 15.