Oh Nurse!

Hotel Artemis (2018) is a very zeitgeisty movie. It is about a hospital for criminals, based in a hotel, like the Continental of John Wick, but has more of the character-driven indie feel of Bad Day at the El Royale.

It is set in future dystopian LA, where the whole city is wracked with water riots. Sterling K. Brown and brother Brian Tyree Henry are robbing a bank when it all goes sideways and they have to get to Hotel Artemis, which is a cover for a high-tech underground hospital. The Nurse (Jodie Foster) has been drinking all night, but her orderly, Dave Bautista, gets her to admit them. They are put in adjoining rooms Waikiki and Honolulu, which will become their pseudonyms. Charlie Day (Pacific Rim), a sleazy arms dealer, and Sofia Boutella, an assassin, are already in residence in Acapulco and Nice, recuperating. The hotel has a nice rundown Deco feel, with huge murals of the tourist locations the rooms are named after. Then, they are fitted with modern, but slightly junky, nanotech medical equipment, including 3-D organ printers.

But the power keeps going out, and Bautista has to go to the roof to fix it, because the Nurse won’t go outside. When someone comes to the door, hurt in the riot, it looks like she’ll have to go outside to bring her in, because it’s someone from her past - Jenny Slate (Venom), a cop. Of course, it is very much against the rules to let a cop into the Hotel Artemis. What’s worse, the hotel’s funder, the meanest mob boss around, the Wolf King of Los Angeles, is coming, and he’s Jeff Goldblum.

Jodie Foster’s nurse is a great character, drunk, broken, tottering along with tiny steps (I bet her feet hurt), but full of strength. Bautista, who goes by Everest (due to his size?), is another - very powerful,  but always deferring to Foster with “Yes, Nurse”. The hotel itself is a great character, although it’s only sketched out with 5-6 sets. I didn’t really buy Goldblum as a dangerous criminal - he’s too Goldblummy for that. But he always welcome.

As for the plot, which I haven’t spoiled at all, I was just glad it wasn’t about fathers. In fact, it was about mothers - something a lot of scriptwriters don’t seem to care about. I guess the Artemis in the title should be a clue that this is a movie about wisdom and craft and women. Now, it isn’t exactly a great movie. Like El Royale, some parts seem sort of random or diversions. I don’t think the Acapulco/Nice characters did anything but supply atmosphere. But they were fun. I’ll take it.