The Million Dollar Hotel *
Rated on a 4-star scale Screening venue: Odeon (Liverpool City Centre) Released in the UK by Icon on April 28, 2000; certificate 15; 122 minutes; countries of origin Germany/USA; aspect ratio 2.35:1
Directed by Wim Wenders; produced by Bono, Nicholas Klein, Deepak Nayar, Wim Wenders. Written by Nicholas Klein; based on a story by Bono and Nicholas Klein. Photographed by Phedon Papamichael; edited by Tatiana S. Rigel.
CAST..... Jeremy Davies..... Tom Tom Milla Jovovich..... Eloise Mel Gibson..... Detective Skinner Jimmy Smits..... Geronimo Peter Stormare..... Dixie Amanda Plummer..... Vivien Gloria Stuart..... Jessica Tom Bower..... Hector Donal Logue..... Charley Best Bud Cort..... Shorty Julian Sands..... Terence Scopey Conrad Roberts..... Stix Harris Yulin..... Stanley Goldkiss
The people behind the scenes of "The Million Dollar Hotel" probably thought they were making a great movie. It's so far out there, odd on such a grand scale, with such emotional sounds and warped visuals, that there must have been a lot of risk and passion put into it. Nobody wants to do that in service of a big disaster. But they have.
To give you an idea of what the movie is like, I must describe some of the characters, because they dominate the film. They reside in the hotel of the title, a large but decrepit old hole that is a perfectly apt place for the grubby bunch of freaks, addicts, losers and nutcases who fill its rooms. At the forefront is Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies), a skinny, fidgety young skateboarder who everyone seems to agree is retarded. He's in love with Eloise (Milla Jovovich), a quiet but self-destructive prostitute who likes to read.
Geronimo (Jimmy Smits), another friend of Tom Tom, wears a cape, paints tar over stolen goods and communicates through shouting. Dixie (Peter Stormare), who has not left the hotel since 1980, still awaits a visit from his dentist, and is convinced that he was the real songwriter for The Beatles. Vivien (Amanda Plummer) shoots heroin and is engaged to a dead man. Shorty (Bud Cort) is a pretty standard drunk. Jessica (Gloria Stuart) is a sweet old lady who swears a lot -- and if there's a comic device I'm really getting tired of in the movies, it's that one.
The story begins with an FBI agent played by Mel Gibson coming to investigate the death of a guy called Izzy, a former inhabitant of the Million Dollar Hotel who fell from the roof. It seems like suicide, but Izzy's rich father is convinced that his boy was murdered, and Gibson determines to find a culprit, aggressively interrogating the hotel's weirdoes and secretly enlisting Tom Tom's help.
We soon learn that the Gibson character, who wears a neck brace and moves in a robotic fashion, did himself grow up among 'freaks', after being born a deformed child with a third arm growing out of his back. As his investigation goes on, he develops an affinity for the hotel occupants, an emotional involvement that threatens to get in the way of his professionalism.
This should be poignant, but never is, because Gibson's body language is risible and distracting, and his dilemma never strikes us as being particularly meaningful. The rest of the movie doesn't work because we have to spend time with a plethora of wretched cretins, who get to be annoying very quickly. "Being John Malkovich" is a recent example of how entertaining eccentricity can be; "The Million Dollar Hotel" is filled with grating noise and murky sets, and most of it is about as fun as a bad trip.
Some of the music is fantastic -- U2's Bono wrote the film's story, and stuck around to create tracks for the soundtrack. There are moments of rich photography, and the editing is often hypnotic, with its fascinating use of shot repetition and emphasis on slow, seductive camera moves. It's even possible to get wrapped up in the plot, simply because we have no way of predicting what's going to happen. Then again, the eventual answer to the murder mystery is lacklustre, and it takes too long to get there. And the bottom line: "The Million Dollar Hotel" is far too ugly and strange for my tastes, and hey, I'm the guy who enjoyed "12 Monkeys".
COPYRIGHT(c) 2000 Ian Waldron-Mantgani Please visit, and encourage others to visit, the UK Critic's website, which is located at http://members.aol.com/ukcritic
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