Hotel Chelsea (2009) Reviews

• Complicated

  Uriah432014-01-23

  For their honeymoon "Kenji Tanaka" (Hiro Masuda) decides to take his new bride "Emi" (Nao Nagasawa) to New York City. While strolling arm and arm on a street they just happen to bump into a man by the name of "Joshua Smith" (Daniel Wilkinson) who was Emi's previous lover for 6 years. However, Kenji takes it all in stride. Later they meet a successful artist by the name of "Tomoko Takagi" (Sawa Suzuki) who just happens to be Joshua's current girlfriend. Not long afterward Kenji is murdered in his hotel room by a masked man and Emi tells the plain clothes policeman--who just happened to be on the scene--that it may have been Joshua who killed him. But the policeman is acting a little strange and there are news reports of a rapist masquerading as a plain clothes police officer being circulated on the airwaves. From then on things begin to get even more complicated. Now, from what I understand this movie received critical acclaim at a couple of international film festivals and that the profits from the release of this movie were donated to benefit victims of the 2011 Fukushima earthquake. Both of these things are certainly noteworthy. But while this film might rightfully garner approval for its humanitarian outreach or inspire critics at a film festival the question that should be asked is "how will it play in Peoria"? While I certainly cannot speak for everyone my personal opinion of it is somewhat mixed. On the one hand, while I thought the back-and-forth flashback technique was artistic I also thought the director (Jorge Valdes-Iga) went a bit overboard with it to the point that it got annoying. Likewise, while I liked the performances of both Nao Nagasawa and Hiro Masuda I thought a couple of the other actors-specifically Daniel Wilkinson and Justin Morck (as "Officer Smith")--were somewhat mediocre. Along with that the story became more and more unrealistic as the movie went on. Be that as it may, I thought Nao Nagasawa was as cute as a speckled pup. In any case, I don't believe that this was necessarily a blockbuster film. If anything I rate it as average.