I was very disappointed by "New Rose Hotel" - how can something featuring Christopher Walken and Willen Defoe be this bad? - but I should have seen it coming, given the nature of the source material.

William Gibson is a great writer who I hardly ever read anymore. He's incredibly inventive and is a master at fabricating convincing, compelling future societies...but his world-view and opinion of human nature is just too glum and depressing. And, unfortunately for a film adaptation, Gibson dialog that sounds convincing and right in the context of the printed page often rattles in the ear like a tin washer when declaimed by a human actor. Simiarly, 90% of the plot development in Gibson's fiction is mysterious, ambiguous, muffled, and cryptic - much like a John LeCarre "Smiley" Cold War novel, there is so much dealing, double dealing, betrayal and backstabbing going on behind the scenes, much of which the reader is not privy too, that it required intense concentration on every aspect of the plot to keep from being completely buffaloed by the events.

On top of this, this is a science fiction story that requires a convincing visual setting to pull the viewer in, the way Gibson's telling details and rolling "techno-speak" pull his readers in. "New Rose Hotel" didn't seem to have much of a budget, so it had to skimp on the settings and the props and just concentrate on the characters and the plot.

All these issues can make for very problematic material for a cinematic adaptation, and alas, the director and screenwriter don't come close to solving those problems. They seemed to have opted for mood and character study over plot momentum and story arc, and as a result, we spend vast amounts of movie time watching Defoe sit glumly in a tiny hotel "capsule", brooding over his mistakes while the movies interrupts with recaps and flashbacks of various scenes of people sitting around drinking and talking at each other. As much as I like Defoe and Walken, even they can't carry this for entire film. The overall impression I get is of a movie just sits around and mopes whenever it isn't being cryptic and dull.

Much has been made of the supposed "hotness" of actress Asia Argento, but since this is a movie where sex is just another tool for corporate espionage, the screenplay itself seems to strip her character of any real humanity, and she comes across as a simple "hooker Barbie" character. That may actually be a tribute to deliberate efforts of both Argento and the director, but it doesn't make for on screen erotic charge. I will say that I've seen her in other roles, and I have to admit she can be a tasty dish. But not so much here.

I liked the original story - it's pure Gibson through and though - but this version of it just doesn't work unless you're an obsessive fan of moody lighting and muffled, expressionistic nihilism. It's too well made to give less than a 5, but that score is a grudging concession to how hard the actors and the cinematographer worked to pull off impossibly stilted and scrambled material.