New Rose Hotel

One of the minor curiosities of contemporary cinema is the failure of cyberpunk godfather William Gibson, whose work has influenced movies from 1982's Blade Runner to this year's The Matrix, to properly adapt any of his densely layered, atmospheric novels or stories to film. While the author continues to struggle with a script from his seminal 1983 novel Neuromancer (and hopefully atone for his treatment of his own Johnny Mnemonic), hand-held camera cowboy Able Farrara (California; Bad Lieutenant) takes a stab at adapting this earlier story from the Gibson universe.

Setting a more gritty, personal, less tech-intensive tone (reminiscent of one of the more successful cyberpunk movies to date -- which didn't even claim membership in the genre -- David Mamet's The Spanish Prisoner), New Rose Hotel follows two megabuck corporate mercenaries, Fox and X (played by Christopher Walken and Willem Dafoe -- and remember, this story was written ten or twelve years before "The X-Files," for which Gibson written a couple original episodes, good ones at that…), scheming to hijack a gifted bioengineer from his German employers and deliver him to a Japanese competitor. To this end they recruit Sandie, a sultry young Italian torch-singing prostitute, or maybe she's a trick-turning singer (played by Asia Argento, daughter of horror director Dario).

Not a lot happens in the way of action, the bulk of the film comprising much talky debauchery, X falling for Sandie, and Fox waxing poetic with continual streams of culturally-mixed metaphors about "the edge" and "corporate evictors." It's not ground-breaking stuff, but it is frequently atmospheric. By eschewing the o-wow approach for a more matter-of-fact near future, New Rose Hotel imparts a disquieting feeling that, unlike the explosive fantasy of James Bond movies, this sort of ruthless treachery could be going on all the time. Or soon will be. Not a classic -- it's a bit too slow and methodical -- but worth a rent for fans of the genre, if just to enjoy Walken's typically invigorating performance. C+

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