User Reviews

A man enters a motel room, moves all the furniture, rolls up the rug, pries open the floor, drops a satchel into the hole, puts everything back in place, hangs around, answers the door and is blown to smithereens.

Ten years later, a priest, a traveling salesman, a girl singer and an angry hippie chick are checked into the El Royale motel by a deaf hotel clerk. Only one of them is what he or she claims to be.

It's an elaborately, almost flamboyantly written neo-noir. Clearly writer-director Drew Goddard has seen Quentin Tarrantino's pictures and has learned his stye of writing a movie: take a bunch of great shots, and write a script that gets from one to the next. Add in some shock value and a great setting -- the Arte Moderne El Royale is clearly modeled on the Cal-Neva Lodge, the glitzy hotel half in California and half in Nevada, that was bought by Sinatra and Dean Martin fronting for the Mafia. A great music track is necessary -- 1960s girl-band hits. Where he has bettered Tarrantino -- with whom I have reached my limit -- is that it's not necessary to go all potty-mouth all the time, and if you can't remember a great shot to steal, why, you can write your own.

Gasp! What an insane idea! Thanks to cinematographer Seamus McGarvey, composer Michael Giacchino and the other talent behind the camera, as well as a solid cast led by Jeff Bridges, it works very well... although about ten minutes from the end something bumped my concentration to make it clear all this was scripted. In sum, there's nothing absolutely original about this movie, but it's pretty well put together and will keep you guessing until the end.

Whoa, pleasant surprise here! The movie delivered a lot more than I was expecting with a title like "Bad Times at the El Royale". Seems like Jeff Bridges can't miss ever since "Crazy Heart", with follow up grizzled, ornery characterizations in "Rooster Cogburn" and "Hell or High Water". He was great here as the dementia challenged old timer bent on reclaiming an old score from ten years prior during a robbery that went South. But he's not alone among a cast that includes relative newcomer Cynthia Erivo, Jon Hamm, Dakota Johnson and Chris Hemsworth, who provides an additional layer of intensity with an appearance late in the story. Part of my fondness for the film comes from an appreciation for Tarantino-esque story telling with a non-linear chronology, which was very effective here and not too difficult to follow.

What really got my attention in the early going was when Calhoun Appliance salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Hamm) placed a call to J. Edgar Hoover at the FBI..., wait, what? Then it gets weirder and weirder with the El Royale's secret passage containing two way mirrors, listening devices and secret recording equipment. The principal story takes place in the mid to late Sixties, with a very satisfying soundtrack recalling some of the big hits of the era, which nicely redounds to Cynthia Erivo's character, a promising lounge singer attempting to make it big with nearby casino bookings. But as the viewer, you're never quite sure what direction the story is going in until the all but invisible Billy Lee (Hemsworth) shows up in the sixth chapter to turn things upside down.

So with a lot of twists and turns and some unconventional characters, the film turned out to be a pleasant surprise for this viewer, who hadn't heard anything about it until running across the title at my local library. I'd strongly recommend it except for the fact that it won't be appreciated by anyone turned off by chronologically challenged stories with less than savory characters. That would be like getting whacked in the head with a whiskey bottle, which by the way, figures prominently in a particularly jarring scene. One of the many surprises in a film full of them.

BAD TIMES AT THE EL ROYALE is a generally likeable crime thriller that keeps you guessing for a while before letting rip with a high-energy climax. It's another single location type movie set in the lobby and various rooms of a slightly sleazy motel, but the good news is that it's a lot more intelligent than Tarantino's similar HATEFUL EIGHT. The first half takes a little while to get going with character stories presented as sub-plots that mingle together in a way similar to the likes of 11:14, although not quite as good. The ending really picks up with actors such as Jeff Bridges and Chris Hemsworth shining in against-type roles, and the unknown-to-me cast members pull off effective performances too. Not quite a classic, but still a fun way to spend an hour or two.

It is the 1960s. The El Royale hotel/motel/casino sits on the California/Nevada border. Staffed only by youngster Miles, a number of guests arrive. Each has a secret, and no-one is quite who they might appear to be at first sight. A very eventful night is under way.

This noir crime(ish) thriller starts with an intriguing opening scene before settling down to tell the main story. This is peppered with backstory flashbacks for the various characters, small narrative rewinds so that you can see events from alternative points of view, and a succession of reveals and plot developments which have you constantly on the wrong foot.

It is a narrative delight. I love to be kept unsettled, and this throws things at you which you never anticipated, yet never unfairly. You might not have had any warning, and to that extent you can cry "Deus ex machina!" but such elements are not inconsistent with what has happened previously.

The script was fun. The casting and performances are uniformly great. And the direction is excellent - the film looks great. For a long film - the exact same length as First Man - the time fairly zips by.

Others have compared this with Tarantino. Not me - it doesn't have that smug self-reverential air to it which characterises Tarantino's films.

This is one of my favourite films this year.

Having heard much praise about this film following its release and since it didn't do well at the box office, it has been labeled as "underrated" and a "hidden gem".

The film starts off interesting and quite different and engaging, when we get introduced to the characters. We expect things to get crazy and unexpected but most that happened was quite predictable and tame. Of course once a character does get killed, things start to get out of hand and we see the other characters panicking and the mystery does start but the film never quite delivers greatness.

Once Chris Hemsworth's character enters with his own title card scene, the film slows and drags down. A decent performance but the film does downhill from here.

The final 20 minutes weren't that great either, and we were left with a disappointing and predictable ending, with a typical gun fight showdown type ending killing all but two of the lead characters. Was expecting some major twists and turns.

Bad Times isn't a great movie or a bad movie but given its hype, it was somewhat disappointing and expected a better finish.

Remember when Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction made their initial splash for Quentin Tarantino and studios rushed to get their own chopped up narrative films in theaters? Killing Zoe, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, 2 Days in the Valley, Smoking Aces and plenty more, it seemed like everyone was trying to make a movie that didn't follow a linear track, had overly erudite killers with a skewed moral code and plenty of strange MacGuffins. As if 1992 was back again, I threw Bad Times at the El Royale into our blu ray player and sat back to watch.

One night in 1969, on the California/Nevada border, seven strangers all spend the night in a shady hotel -- the El Royale itself. The hotel -- which has seen better days -- is split in half between the two states and is pretty much a "pervert hotel" now, although once it was home to the Rat Pack when they weren't in Reno or Las Vegas (the hotel is based on the Cal Neva Resort and Casino that was once owned by Sinatra).

Catholic priest Daniel Flynn (Jeff Bridges), singer Darlene Sweet (Cynthia Erivo, the best part of this movie), vacuum salesman Laramie Seymour Sullivan (Jon Hamm) and Emily Summerspring (Dakota Johnson) all arrive and wait for the hotel's only worker, Miles Miller (Lewis Pullman).

Much like Tarantino, each section of the story overlaps and features title cards. It starts with the reveal that Sullivan is really an FBI agent who was sent to remove listening devices in one of the rooms. After finding double digits worth of them, he also discovers a tunnel filled with one-way mirrors and cameras that film everything in each room. Although he witnesses what he thinks is a kidnapping in Emily's room, he is told by no less than J. Edgar Hoover himself to not interfere and to sabotage all of the vehicles so that no one can leave until he finds a critical piece of film. However, he can't stop himself from trying to rescue Emily's captive, who ends up being her sister, Rose (Cailee Spaeny). Emily ends up blowing him away with a shotgun.

Meanwhile...

Father Flynn and Sweet have dinner at the hotel's automat diner. She notices him spiking her drink, so she knocks him out and tries to escape. As she watches Emily murder Sullivan, he recovers and discovers the hidden hallway and Miles confesses that the management of the hotel has asked him to film incriminating moments. However, he has kept one film that incriminates a recently killed public figure. As Miles watches the hostage situation in Emily's room, he catches buckshot from her killing Sullivan right in the face.

Sweet tries to escape, but the cars have all been played with. Father Flynn gets into her car and reveals that he's really a criminal who has spent the last ten years in jail only to learn that he has dementia. He knows that his brother (Nick Offerman) has hidden money in the hotel, but he has no idea which room it's in. He offers to split the money if she'll let him in her room. As she sings (this scene took over twenty takes of live singing), he finds the money.

Emily and Rose discover the tunnel and start to question Miles, who somehow survived. The older sister has removed the other from a cult run by Billy Lee (Chris Hemsworth, who even has his own Hairdresser to Mr. Hemsworth employee in the credits), a Manson-esque figure who is responsible for the killings we keep seeing on the TV in the hotel's bar. Even worse -- he's on his way to the El Royale.

The killer and his cult arrive, playing a brutal game of roulette with the lives of the survivors. After a Mexican standoff -- yes, another Quentin trope -- lives are lost, people are absolved and a few people survive.

This is 2 hours and 21 minutes long and the last act feels like forever, with near glacial pacing. At first, I defended it to my wife that everything was leading to this. However, it went on. And on. And then on some more.

This movie was written, produced and directed by Drew Goddard, who also directed The Cabin in the Woods as wrote Cloverfield and adapted World War Z for the screen. He was also part of Deadpool 2 and will be working on the next sequel, X-Force.

TV lovers will enjoy seeing William B. David (the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files) show up as a judge and Jim O'Heir (Jerry from Parks and Recreation) as Reno host. These are simply cameos, but still nice to see these actors in a major movie.

Some may enjoy this film, but the more I thought of those unremarkable wannabe Tarantinos, the more this film felt like it fit right in. It's certainly not a bad film, but it's not one that you need to go out of your way to see. It just is. With time so limited these days, I feel like things have to be better than just fine.