Hotel Artemis: Blood, Bullets, and Mental Illness

(Spoilers and curse words ahead...)

There's a lot of cool going on in Hotel Artemis. It has a cast full of cool actors, like Dave Bautista, Sterling K. Brown and Jeff Goldblum. The concept, that there's a hospital masquerading as a hotel where criminals can go get stitched up when the shit hits the fan, is a very cool idea. The movie's visual style is really cool. The little details in this movie, like 3-D printing organs or the fact the most of the characters are named after the names of the rooms they're staying in, are really cool. DAMMIT, this movie is just really cool.

But the coolest thing of all about Artemis? The fact that, at its heart, it's a movie about a woman fighting to overcome anxiety. That shit's fucking awesome.

The story: The Nurse (Jodie Foster) runs the titular "hotel", which is really a health care provider for those engaged in lives of crime. There are rules. You have to be a member to get in. Don't kill any of the other guests. Don't abuse the hotel staff. Blah, blah, blah... The rules are enforced by a mountain of a man appropriately named Everest (Bautista).

Waikiki (Brown) checks into the Artemis with his brother after a job goes pear-shaped. (I'm not British. Can I get away with using "pear-shaped"?) Acapulco (Charlie Day) and Nice (Sofia Boutella) are already guests. They have their own subplots going on. Things really start getting tense when The Wolf King (Goldblum), the crime lord who owns much of the city (including the Artemis) and Morgan (Jenny Slate), someone from The Nurse's past, show up in need of help. Helping Morgan would break the rules, and with The Wolf King on the premises, that means certain death. What's a nurse who caters to the criminal underworld to do?

Written and directed by Drew Pearce, whose previous credits include writing Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation and Iron Man 3, Artemis doesn't easily fit into any genre I can think of. There are some pretty kick-ass action sequences, but it's really not an action movie. It has quite a few scenes of hardcore criminals talking trash to one another, like something out of Reservoir Dogs, but it's pretty far from a heist movie. I laughed plenty, but this ain't no comedy.

The closest I can come to slapping genre label on this baby comes when I consider the main story thread in the movie. The Nurse is stricken with anxiety, to the point where it occasionally cripples her. Over the course of the movie, she has to overcome said anxiety to figure out a way out of her situation. The Nurse's situation leads to plenty of suspense, so maybe this is a suspense thriller.

As someone who suffers from anxiety, it was easy for me to get behind The Nurse. (That's not intended to sound as dirty as it does.) And the flick doesn't end with her permanently conquering her issues. The message of the movie seems to me to be that even in the midst of your worst days, the best way to deal with anxiety is little by little, one catastrophe at a time.

Other movies have dealt with similar mental issues, but Artemis is the first time I can recall a movie full of crooks and hoods handling anxiety in a way that's this relatable and resonant.  Foster captures the putting on a brave face and crumbling when no one's looking of anxiety in a way that really hit home with me. That's very, very cool.

Artemis has flaws, one of which is the one-note quality of every character other than The Nurse. But the cast plays those notes really fucking well. Bautista steals the show as Everest, The Nurse's put-upon assistant who's as much a handyman keeping the hotel running as he is an enforcer. Charlie is at his most sniveling and most prickish, but he's just so good at it. Boutella is all sex and lethality. She slinks through the film with such grace, and her big fight scene is one of the highlights of the movie. And Brown is 100% pure badass cool. He's come a long way since his days on Supernatural.

Another flaw? Goldblum and Slate aren't in the movie enough. Goldblum's Wolf King is such an interesting guy, and I wish I knew more about him. I have a crush on Slate, so wanting more of her in the movie probably comes from that. What can I say? We all judge movies based on different criteria.

It takes a while to get to the action, but it's worth waiting for. While waiting, we get to explore this world, its rules, its politics and its oodles of atmosphere. The colors in the Artemis are rich and the light perfectly accents the visuals and creates buckets of mood.

Throw in all the cool stuff, the great casting, the relatable anxiety storyline and the details of the world the film is set in, and Hotel Artemis overcomes its flaws and provides for a tense, entertaining ride. If you're sick of franchise blockbusters, this movie could be the perfect cinematic medication.