The stench of neon lights in a sinful city street are always interesting to me, and these are the elements this film promised. On that front it absolutely delivered, but what else? The movie takes place, as the name suggests, on one night in a decrepit hotel. One positive I can say is that the hotness of the summer night is absolutely palpable in this piece.
The story is about an old crook who gets out of the prison. His best friend, our main protagonist, has a plan to move to Las Vegas and start a new, legit life with the money he has managed to save. But the old jailbird's blood flow's too hot and he kills a prostitute in anger. Now the duo must get rid of the body before the buss leaves and before this messes their shiny new future before it even begins.
That's a nice premise and all, but few things stuck up like a sore thumb. First of all, the recently released character is a complete jerk, and thus as a watcher it was rather difficult to accept our main character's necessity to keep this parasite out of responsibility just because, we are told, they used to be mates. The main dude himself was fine, but a more three dimensional sidekick would have made a more balanced double act so that a viewer would not want anything bad to happen to either of them.
Secondly, neither of these old crooks really develop as characters throughout the thing. The movie just ends and doesn't really resolve anything - as if they would have started to free ball the script without any idea where they were heading.
Actually much more interesting than the main story is a B-plot about a young, empty headed girl whom a slippery tongued pimp (Vinnie Jones) half cons to become a prostitute. The girl is completely at lost inside her tough interior, but luckily meets an older harlot who takes her under her wing. This particular hooker is the best and most positive character in the film. Their plot line actually goes somewhere, which is welcome.
Other good stuff: the world of the film is made nicely pathetic and slimy. This is good. The drunken idiot who works the hotel's reception is a fun character. The almost "Weekend at Bernie's" -style corpse charade by the main duo at the end part of the film goes into a total farce. This, and other humour is good to balance out the darkly lit nihilism.
Unfortunately, in the end the result is still somewhat forgettable. The drama never ascends the smallness of it's characters which became rather numbing after a while. Also we had slowness and nothing really happening at times. It isn't, by no means, a horrible film and one can still do much worse.
