‘Million Dollar Hotel’ a flawed but evocative mystery

Film: Wim Wenders brings a marvelous sense of place to formulaic mystery

By SORINA DIACONESCU
Contributing Writer

The City of Angels has been portrayed in more films than anyone cares to remember. Needless to say, the fictional L.A., typically seen at the movies as a glib, one-dimensional place that looks like the backdrop for a car commercial, has no relation to the real thing.

To the handful of inspired screen depictions of Los Angeles"Blade Runner," "L.A. Confidential" and "Swingers" come to mindwe can now add "The Million Dollar Hotel," a collaboration between U2 frontman Bono and German-born director Wim Wenders.

Wenders is a filmmaker with a knack for capturing the soul of a city. In some of his previous creations, like the literally and figuratively divine "Wings of Desire," and his most recent effort, "Buena Vista Social Club," Wenders invested places like Berlin and Havana with great lyrical beauty without glamorizing them.

In "The Million Dollar Hotel," Wenders applies a similar treatment to an area of downtown L.A. commonly referred to as Skid Row, where a once-magnificent hotel is now home to a cast of misfits and mentally unstable characters living on the fringes of society. The film was shot on location at the Frontier Hotel, and for $300 a month guests can stay at the hotel not unlike the characters in this film.

The story follows the adventures of the hotel residents, as seen through the eyes of Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies), a childlike young man with a freaked-out, punk-rock haircut, perceived as "an idiot" by those around him. Tom Tom has developed a crush on Eloise (Milla Jovovich), an ethereal beauty with a penchant for books, who is tormented by mental problems of her own.

As Tom Tom and Eloise's relationship beings to unfold, the hotel is shaken by the arrival of FBI special agent Skinner (Mel Gibson), who has come to investigate the suspicious death of a junkie-in-residence named Izzy. Did Izzy jump off the hotel rooftop, or was he pushed? Was he an unrecognized talent, the creator of magnificent artworks with great potential for commercial success? As detective Skinner tries to untangle the mystery of Izzy's death, every hotel resident becomes a potential suspect.

Based on a story idea by Bono, "The Million Dollar Hotel" is a flawed but in many ways extraordinary film. The premise may well be a murder mystery, but this is no ordinary hard-boiled detective story. The unusual love story between Eloise and Tom Tom at the caramel heart of this movie has a magical quality unmatched by the other narrative strands that make up the plot. This is due in part to two strong leading performances.

Jeremy Davies, known mostly for his portrayal of cowardly Corporal Upham in "Saving Private Ryan," brings out touching and playful nuances in Tom Tom, a Forrest Gump-like character who is essentially a simpleton. And Milla Jovovich, an actress whose startling looks often get in the way of her acting, does a fine job of bringing to life the fallen street angel Eloise. Gibson delivers a capable variation on his tough-guy cop persona, and the misfits who round out the cast, including Jimmy Smits as a Native American artist and Peter Stormare as "the lost Beatle," are responsible for some entertaining vignettes that pepper the narrative. The film also rewards the viewer with a number of quirky surprisesa blink-and-you-miss-it cameo appearance by Bono and a hilarious Spanish-language version of the Sex Pistols anthem "Anarchy in the U.K."

Some of the film's weak moments occur when the plot crosses over into banal detective story fodder, or even worse, makes attempts at social satire. Wenders is an unmatched poet of urban desolation, but he is clearly out of his element as a social critic.

Not unexpectedly, one of the best things about this movie is its soundtrack, chockfull of dreamy, soulful tracks by U2 and a beautiful, blissed-out version of the Lou Reed classic "Satellite of Love," which alone is worth the admission price.

Copyright 2001 by the Daily Trojan. All rights reserved.
This article was published in Vol. 142, No. 16 (Thursday, February 1, 2001), beginning on page 8 and ending on page 11.