Themes: Down on Their Luck, Private Eyes, Murder Investigations
Main Cast: Jeremy Davies, Milla Jovovich, Mel Gibson, Jimmy Smits, Peter Stormare
Release Year: 2000
Country: US/DE
Run Time: 122 minutes
MPAA Rating: R
Plot
Legendary filmmaker Wim Wenders returns to the screen with this loosely structured murder mystery. The Million Dollar Hotel unites Wender's obsession with cool music, lost souls, and American trash culture. Set in 2001, the film opens with Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies) taking a flying leap off the roof of the Million Dollar Hotel, an ironically titled dive in the seedy section of L.A. Told in an extended flashback, Tom Tom recounts the murder investigation of a down-and-out artist and son of a media mogul, Izzy Goldkiss (Tim Roth), who also fell off the hotel. FBI special agent Skinner (none other than Mel Gibson), sporting a neck brace, looks into the death only to discover that the building is teeming with weirdos and losers. There is Vivien (Amanda Plummer), who claims to be the fiancée of the rock star; Geronimo (Jimmy Smits), a huckster trying to make a buck by selling Izzy's abstract painting; Eloise (Milla Jovovich), a burned out prostitute with a passion for intellectual literature; and Dixie (Peter Stormare), who swears up and down that he is the fifth Beatle. As the film progresses, Skinner proves to be just as much of a freak as the hotel tenets -- he was born with a third arm that was surgically removed from his back. Just as in his Until the End of the World (1991), Wenders features a fantastic soundtrack including songs from Bono, Daniel Lanois, and Brian Eno. The Million Dollar Hotel opened the 2000 Berlin Film Festival. ~ Jonathan Crow, All Movie Guide
The main charm and flaw of the soundtrack to Wim Wenders' The Million Dollar Hotelis exactly the same thing: a sultry, omnipresent moodiness, as seductive as it is lulling. At first, it draws the listener in; U2's "The Ground Beneath Her Feet" and "Never Let Me Go" (performed by Bono and the MDH Band, a superstar collective featuring Brian Eno and Bill Frissell, among others) unspool at a leisurely, graceful pace. It's easy to get lost in the slow, dark crawl of the music. The second new U2 song, "Stateless," maintains the intriguing atmosphere -- halfway between The Joshua Tree and Zooropa -- and then, things begin to unravel. Lou Reed's "Satellite of Love" makes its first of three appearances on the soundtrack. Sonically, it's really no different than the three preceding tracks. After all, it's performed by the MDH band -- but it's sung by Milla Jovovich, the star of the film. Now, Jovovich is a recording artist in her own right, and she's actually one of some merit, yet this recording falls flat, collapsing in vocal histrionics at the end. Once the soundtrack loses momentum, it never regains its forward motion. There are some very good moments scattered throughout the record, from Bono and Daniel Lanois' "Falling at Your Feet" to various assorted instrumentals, but much of it winds up sounding a bit too samey and a little too draggy, with the variations on the basic, elegantly ominous sound wind up not being varied enough. Even though it meanders too much, The Million Dollar Hotel is always on the verge of being compelling, which may be enough for fans of atmospheric film soundtracks, who are accustomed to the music drifting a little bit when it's separated from the visuals. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide
The movie is about a group of very different people who live in a hotel in Los Angeles, focusing primarily on Tom Tom (Davies) and his romance with Eloise (Milla Jovovich). The events that unfold in the film are the result of the apparent suicide of the son of a United States Senator (Tim Roth) at the hotel. His father commissions an FBI agent (Gibson) to look into his death.
Production
The story was originally developed by Bono in 1987 when filming the famous music video for "Where the Streets Have No Name". The movie had an estimated budget of $8 million, but opened to only $29,483 in US box office, with little more success in subsequent weeks or in other countries.[1] It also received very poor reviews, obtaining 25 of 100 on Metacritic[2] and 23% on Rotten Tomatoes,[3] although it won the Silver Berlin Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2000. In an October 2000 press conference in Sydney, before the Australian release of the film, Mel Gibson said, "I thought it was as boring as a dog's ass." He later explained:
"It was at the end of a day where I had done 6,000 interviews, some guy was ragging on the film and it just slipped out. Later, I thought 'God, why did I say that? I'm an idiot! I produced this film. I'm distributing it!' It was pretty thoughtless of me, because a lot of people worked very hard on that film, and the fact is there are moments of genius in it. The soundtrack is by U2, and it's phenomenal. So I really regret saying that. I have written a lot of apology letters about it."[4]
