After reading a number of reviews at imdb--and elsewhere--I have to come-down-on-the-side of the director, Abel Ferrera's
vision. This is a GREAT science-fiction film, and for those who are
generally-disappointed with it, I have to ask whether they
understand what sci-fi IS. If science-fiction isn't about the present
(as-filtered through an imagined-future), it generally isn't good, but
New Rose Hotel fits this criteria. This is a pretty-old story from the
80s that Gibson had published in "Omni Magazine," it might-have
been his first-acceptance. While it is a minor-story, it has
dramatic-elements to it that are very-pleasing within-the-structure
of the "Ferrera" universe: a metropolitan-dystopia, urban and
moral-decay, the eternal quest by many for "power," official- corruption, the consequences of murder, sexuality, drugs, how
memory works, they all mesh-well with Ferrera's thematic-styles.
There are no great moral-lessons here, this is about the aftermath
of that paradigm. The only-complaint I have is that the future has
caught-up a bit, due to the age of the original-story. With our
human-society growing more-restrictive, with the rise of corporate- statism, and the subsequent-decline of the Nation State, New
Rose Hotel seems almost "quaint." That should give-us-pause.
