Passing of time
This film ,with the passage of time , is standing up rather well . Good sci-fi with dialogue and meaning .
NS Croysdale
I remember seeing this film in the 1998 Hawaii International Film Festival. I saw it in the historic Hawaii Theater with a seating capacity of about 1400 seats. It was sold out. This film was the reason why the film festival broke even that year.
But the reaction was that this was a bad, bad film. Kinda like "Battlefield Earth" bad. The audience reaction was that of silence. Complete silence. No one wanted to say anything.
This goes to show that best practice is that if you do not have anything nice to say than to keep quiet. Nice audience. Everyone was quiet.
One of my friends actually liked the movie. It took him two years before he found someone who agreed with him.
Unfortunately, most people won't get this film. If you follow William Gibson's literary work, you will see that all the dialogue is coming alive more than it ever has. Of course, Abel Ferrara accentuates the lurid underworld moreso than anyone in Hollywood would. I think the brilliance of this film is that they never really show the action apart from when Fox jumps off the balcony. This is probably also what alienated the potential mainstream audience. It probably wouldn't have hurt to show some of the action like the big lab meltdown in Marrakesh. But in keeping with the short story, it is all told from X's perspective.
[Spoilers to Follow]
Asia Argento's character is pretty interesting. The last act is X contemplating suicide in the New Rose Hotel. He thinks back on all the hints that would've revealed Sandii as a double agent. And then the big moment when it is revealed that X did have an idea, and let his emotions get the better of him. I think Willem Dafoe did a decent job, but someone younger like Jonny Lee Miller or Aaron Eckhart would've given the role more of a romantic balance with Asia Argento. I didn't really feel the chemistry between Dafoe and Argento. A lot of those New York filmmakers are steadfastly into casting New York actors.
All-in-all, I liked the film. It had potential to be much better, but probably not at the budget Abel Ferrara had to work with.
I agree that if you include Gibson's short story and his body of work while watching the film, you'll get a lot more out of it. On its own, it doesn't really stand out.
But--how about a remake now, or a "director's cut" where the movie gets a proper adaptation and release? I think even a full-on redux might make a great film, and this one could be looked at as the "trainer".
Asia Argento is enormously talented, a great actress, Willem Dafoe is also and an even bigger star now than he was then, and even Walken is still acting. The rest of the cast could be supplanted or asked back, depending on availability.
This would be an excellent candidate for a remake, based on its potential--and would certainly be a better film than Johnny Mnemonic. Gibson's adaptations and even screenplays have flopped every one of them, and his short stories are gold. The Matrix films can be viewed as testing the waters for Neuromancer, even though Gibson himself thinks of it as juvenile. With the CGI technology available to even the low budget film auteur, New Rose Hotel could become a new masterpiece if it were approached well, with a good screenplay, the right director, and mostly the same cast.