BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE : Tuesday 23rd October 2018.

'BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE' which I saw on Tuesday evening this week is a late 1960's neo-noir set American thriller that is Directed, Written and Co-Produced by Drew Goddard. He also wrote multiple episodes of popular television series 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer', 'Angel', 'Alias', 'Lost', created and wrote two episodes of 'Daredevil' and wrote for the big screen too including 'Cloverfield', 'World War Z', 'The Martian', and 'Cabin in the Woods' which was also his Directing debut. After this outing Goddard is Writing and Directing Marvel's 'X-Force'. Costing US$32M to make, the film has so far grossed US$22M since its release in the US and Australia two weeks ago and has received generally positive press, although some are stating that the two hours twenty minutes running time is a little overcooked.

And so the storyline here follows seven strangers who find themselves at the El Royale, a novelty hotel traversing the border of California and Nevada close to Lake Tahoe. As the film opens we are introduced to a man who enters a hotel room at the El Royale in 1960, rather nervously, pulling out a hand gun, peering out of the window before pulling the curtains closed. He then proceeds to move all the furniture, pull up the carpet, pull up the floorboards and deposits a hold-all bag under the floor before replacing the floorboards, replacing the carpet and replacing all the furniture to its original position. He then hears a knock at the door, opens it and is blasted dead with a shotgun. We then fast forward ten years later to 1970, and at the same El Royale Hotel checking in are Father Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo) and travelling vacuum cleaner salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm). Sometime shortly after, Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) drives erratically up to the front entrance and brings her sports coupe to a grinding halt on the driveway. She saunters out, and also demands a room.

They wait patiently at the Reception ringing the bell awaiting for someone to appear but for ten minutes nobody does. The four exchange social niceties to pass the time of day with Sullivan announcing that the former Rat Pack destinational hotel is now a shadow of its former self as it had lost its gaming licence some years ago, since which time trade has gone rapidly downhill. The hotel's only employee Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman) appears and books them into the rooms, giving them the choice to stay in Nevada or California and officially welcomes them to the El Royale giving them the rules of the house . . . . a routine he would have repeated countless times over the years.

Upon checking into the honeymoon suite, at his very specific request, Sullivan (real name Dwight Broadbeck and in reality an FBI Agent masquerading as a travelling salesman) scans the room for bugs. Upon closer examination of the room he retrieves twenty or so hidden microphones of two different designs hidden in every nook and cranny - in light fittings, power sockets, in the phone, the TV set, the curtain rail and behind picture frames. Having turned the room upside down and exhausted his search he puts a call through to none other than J. Edgar Hoover who tells Broadbeck to remove all evidence of the FBI's operations, for reasons that are unclear.

He goes to the Reception to find it, surprise surprise, unattended. He rings the bell but that goes unanswered. He retrieves the master key to gain access to a locked door in his room, and ventures back of house in search of Miller, whom he finds passed out on bed with a needle hanging from his arm. Broadbeck then decides to investigate back of house and sees a passageway leading down a corridor with one-way mirrors looking into each guest room, and with a film camera set up for the far room at the end of the darkened corridor. Broadbeck spies Father Flynn ripping up the floorboards in his room, Darlene practising her singing into the mirror, and witnesses an apparent kidnapping in Summerspring's room.

Broadbeck puts a call into his office again to be instructed to disregard the alleged kidnapping and to sabotage all the vehicles to prevent the other guests from leaving. In the meantime, Flynn had overheard Darlene's singing from the next room and asks her to join him for dinner. She reluctantly agrees and the pair go to the lounge to retrieve some pie from a vending machine. Listening to music from the juke box, Flynn pours himself a stiff drink and request that Darlene join him for one. She observes Flynn spiking her drink and belts him over the head with a bottle sending him reeling unconscious to the floor. She makes a quick exit out of the hotel into the pouring rain. Miles discovers Flynn on the floor in the bar surrounded by broken glass and a big gash to his forehead. Seeking forgiveness for his sins from the Priest, he leads Father Flynn to the back of house corridor stating that the owners of the hotel who live interstate instruct Miles to film certain guests and send them the footage once every month. Miles has however, chosen to withhold one especially damning film reel of a recently deceased public figure, because the subject person in question was kind to him and if it was to go public would cause a huge scandal.

Acting directly against the orders of his superiors, Broadbeck takes the law into his own hands and after sabotaging the vehicles, bursts in on Emily's room where the alleged kidnapping is unfolding. It is revealed that Emily is in fact holding hostage her own sister Rose (Cailee Spaeny) to protect her from running back to cult leader Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth). Emily opens fire on Broadbeck who is standing directly in front of the rooms mirror, and with a shotgun kills him instantly. Miles who was stood behind that same mirror in the corridor looking in, accidentally gets a face full of buckshot from the same cartridge that killed Broadbeck.

Darlene has meanwhile tried to escape, having witnessed Emily's gunning down of Broadbeck through the opened door, and attempts to start her car but to no avail. Flynn catches up with her and asks to talk. They do so, with Darlene pointing a loaded pistol at Flynn. He comes clean that he is really a criminal named Donald 'Doc' O'Kelly, who was sentenced to ten years jail time after a robbery gone wrong.

Released only days ago on parole, O'Kelly has returned to the El Royale dressed as a Priest to retrieve the bag of swag that his brother Felix had stashed there before being gunned down in a double cross. However, owing to the onset of Alzheimer's, Flynn can't recall which room it was in. The reason he had attempted to drug Darlene was to gain access to her room, deducing that the cash had to be stashed there after he couldn't find it in his own room. Darlene agrees to allow him to search her room in exchange for half the cash.

Having discovered the secret corridor behind the shattered mirror in their room, Emily and Rose interrogate a bloodied Miles with half his face covered in buckshot wounds, about the clandestine surveillance operation. It transpires that Emily had forcibly removed her sister from the clutches of Billy Lee's cult, who by the way whilst being very smooth talking and charismatic was also a sadistic murderer wanted down Florida way for several killings. Rose though loves Billy Lee and has already alerted him to their whereabouts and he is en route. Just as Flynn and Darlene are about to leave with their haul of retrieved cash, Billy Lee arrives with his cultist henchmen and hold them both hostage together now with Emily and Miles too.

While terrorising and interrogating his four captives, Lee discovers the money and the film which he realises pretty quickly is much more valuable than the cash stash. In a sadistic game of roulette, Lee shoots and kills Emily, and threatens to kill Miles, Flynn and Darlene if they do not divulge from whence the money came and Flynn's real identity, sensing that he is not really a Priest. When an overhead lightning strike temporarily cuts the power, Flynn attacks Lee and the hotel lounge catches fire. During the ensuing chaos, Miles reveals that he served as an expert sniper in Vietnam with 123 confirmed skills to his name, but that he can kill no more, being racked with guilt over his killings. At Darlene insistence, given the dire circumstances they find themselves in, he picks up a gun and kills Lee and the other cultists. A distraught Rose stabs Miles in the stomach with a hunting life retrieved from Lee's lifeless body, but is then shot dead by O'Kelly. As Miles lays dying, Darlene urges O'Kelly (returning to Father Flynn mode) to forgive him of his guilt over his actions in Vietnam and at the El Royale over the years, so that he can enter the Kingdom of Heaven at peace at last. O'Kelly and Darlene retrieve the money and throw the canister of film and the hotel register with their names on it into the fire now quickly taking hold in the hotel lobby, before the pair flee, leaving in their wake a trail of death and destruction.

I enjoyed 'Bad Times at the El Royale' despite its elongated running time. Some scenes did labour the point just a little too much, and could easily have been trimmed back by ten or fifteen minutes or so, but that said the film moves along at a good pace, and there is plenty of action and unfolding events to maintain the interest. This film is a solid mash-up of Tarantino and Agatha Christie as it weaves back and forth in time over the course of that one fateful evening and tells the story from each players own point of view to build up the entire picture by the time the credits roll. Stylishly filmed with a faithful recreation of the era and sharp dialogue delivered by a strong ensemble cast who individually all deliver violent outbursts and nail their persona's. Especially noteworthy is Cynthia Erivo in her big screen debut as the soulful singer determined to make it on her own terms in very much a mans world, and Jeff Bridges playing an all too familiar if comfortable role as the weary and gruff ageing linchpin to the night unfolding the way it does. Chris Hemsworth's chiseled physique is also on show for all the world to see, and here he plays largely against type and clearly relishing in it. Certainly worth a look and the price of entry, albeit just a tad overcooked.

'Bad Times at the El Royale' merits four claps of the Odeon Online clapperboard, out of a possible five.

-Steve, at Odeon Online-