'Hotel Artemis' review: Probably could have used some Keanu Reeves

Or less Charlie Day. That would have been good too.

Hotel Artemis is not a John Wick spin-off. I was hoping it was, you were hoping it was, but it’s not. Let’s just get that out of the way right now so that we can try to move on and accept this movie for what it really is.

And what it really is, of course, is a subpar action thriller that doesn’t come anywhere close to the levels of John Wick.

Directed by Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation writer Drew Pearce, Hotel Artemis takes place in a near post-apocalyptic wasteland in the not too distant future.

Yes, there’s some new kinds of technology that’s introduced and all, but the nation is tearing itself apart over a recent water crisis. There are literally riots out on the streets of every major city in America, causing all kinds of chaos and bloodshed.

That’s just the introduction to the movie. The water crisis and riots really don’t play into the actual story all that much.

In the heart of Los Angeles is the Hotel Artemis — a rundown hotel with a secretive top floor. On that top floor lives ‘the Nurse’ (Jodie Foster). The Nurse has been there for 22 years, as she manages a members-only hospital specifically designed for criminals.

If criminals are in a pinch and need a quick stitch-up or a place to lie low for awhile, they can come to the Hotel Artemis and know that they’ll be safe.

In order to maintain that safety, given that the place is primarily housing assassins and killers, there are quite a lot of rules at the Hotel Artemis. You can’t just walk the halls and start murdering anyone you might disagree with — all your weapons have to be checked at the door and if the Nurse or her assistant Everest (Dave Bautista) so much as think you might be up to something sinister, you’re out of there.

Waikiki (Sterling K. Brown) and his brother Honolulu (Brian Tyree Henry) are two thugs in need of such a place after a bank robbery gone wrong.

Unlucky for them, they picked the worst possible night to frequent the Hotel Artemis. Apart from the fact that a dangerous arms dealer named Acapulco (Charlie Day) and a foreign spy named Nice (Sofia Boutella) are spending the night at the hotel, there’s also a man named Niagara (Jeff Goldblum) they have to deal with.

While the Nurse is the one who runs the Hotel Artemis, Niagara is the one who actually owns it — which is to say he’s the most powerful criminal in Los Angeles who you definitely don’t want to be on the bad side of.

Just so happens, the bank that Waikiki and Honolulu were robbing belongs to Niagara.

Looks like there’s going to be some rules broken tonight.

Despite the obvious similarities to John Wick, it’s a fine premise for the movie. It’s not like Keanu Reeves is the only one who can play an assassin living in this kind of heightened world, and Hotel Artemis definitely tries to have its own take on it and still make it fun.

There’s one real reason to see this movie though, more than anything else — Jodie Foster. The last time Jodie Foster appeared in a movie was all the way back in 2013’s Elysium. While Hotel Artemis certainly isn’t going to be remembered as one of her all-time greatest films, her performance in here reminds us of just how much we miss her.

While this is mostly a dumb, goofy movie that can’t always pick a tone, Foster is the one character actually has some backstory and emotional weight to her. She’s clearly bringing her A-game here, down to the way that her character walks or will linger on certain questions that patients ask her. Her role here is a testament to just how good of an actress she is, as she elevates this movie to a higher level than it has any right being.

Obviously, no one else can really match Foster, but no one is really trying to either. Everyone else is pretty much playing exaggerated versions of themselves, which can sometimes be fun but also doesn’t give the movie much weight. Sterling K. Brown is a nice guy trying to do the right thing, Sofia Boutella is the one killing everyone in the room, Charlie Day is the annoying a-hole we’re all hoping will die a painful death, Jeff Goldblum is the charming one and Dave Bautista is letting off sarcastic comments left and right. All of them are familiar tropes and all of them we’ve seen a hundred times over.

The more intriguing thing that Hotel Artemis tries to set up is its world-building — which, ultimately, it can’t completely pull off either. The Continental was a great location in John Wick because we understood the severity of the rules. If you break them, you’re automatically dead. No redo, no apologies, just a bullet in the back of the head. In Hotel Artemis, characters break the rules left and right, only to be met with more jokes from Dave Bautista about how they really should do something about that.

All of that is to say that Hotel Artemis wants to have its cake and eat it too. It wants to be taken seriously as an action movie with real stakes, but then it goes and introduces things like a water riot and can’t keep its own continuity straight. There’s certainly some fun to be had with the film — when the climatic ending does come, it most definitely pays off — but there’s no denying that it’s also a pretty big missed opportunity.

Watch the trailer for Hotel Artemis here and then let us know, in the comments below, what you thought of the film!