Connor (Paul Herzberg) is a hit man who likes to keep his work "neat and tidy." He takes a suitcase full of money to a seedy motel in London to wait for his mark: a certain Miss Woods, who has a shoe polish cannister that could destroy the government...especially during an election.

While the country votes for its new Prime Minister and Connor plans his "project," a traveling salesman named Mr. Armstrong checks in-- and he is one nasty sumbitch. Will Connor get his (wo)man before his client's political career is ruined? Will the traveling salesman's wife realize she's married a womanizing pig? Will Bubbles and Chunky kiss and make up? (I doubt it).

Room 36 is a British neo-noir from Jim Groom and Tim Dennison (The Revenge of Billy the Kid) that's had an even rougher road to completion than Exorcist: The Beginning. While it's pretty shallow on the intrigue, Room 36 is still fun to watch. The movie is shot in a black and white that's stylish and yet captures the Midlothian Hotel's dinginess perfectly. Its cold-blooded killers and corrupt politicians have no psychological depth, but the cast makes them enjoyable nonetheless.

In particular, Frank Scantori makes the traveling salesman marvelously disgusting. With his cartoonish facial expressions and bottomless libido, Mr. Armstrong is exactly the sort of jerkwad who deserves to get mixed up in a murder plot. In my favorite scene, he's ordering an escort over the phone while the hotel employees listen in, giggling like kids at the back of the class.

Unfortunately, when cute-but-not-hilarious schoolyard humor is the best part of your movie, it's in trouble. Room 36 has some nice touches-- the rare touch of color in its gray landscape that focuses your attention on something you'd never see otherwise, the fellow upstairs who only wants to watch "the bleeding telly"--but there's no real foundation beneath them. The film's plot is more screwball than corkscrew, full of silly coincidences and strange mix-ups. Yes, thrillers and comedies of errors have twisty stories in common, and that's fertile ground for satire. But I wish that the writers had spent more time fleshing out the film's narrative. The story seems much more complex than it really is, and isn't satisfying at all. Room 36 ultimately feels like icing without a cake.

That's a real shame, because Room 36 is also fun to watch. It's visually interesting (if not exactly groundbreaking); it's funny; its characters make the most of their single dimensions. But it ends up feeling too serious for a comedy and too silly for a thriller.

My screener copy is just a DVD-R containing the feature film and scene selections. But the image is crystal-clear (even with "Copyright Ivory Tower Productions" sketched over every scene) and the audio is fine as well. If distributor Ivory Tower plans to bring Room 36 to North America, I hope they include a filmmakers' commentary. I'd like to hear what movies influenced Room 36, and yeah, I'm a sucker for a plagued production saga. Room 36 feels rough, but I still liked it. The film does so many things well that I'd like to see more of Jim Groom's and Tim Dennison's work. It's just too bad that Room 36 can't be greater than the sum of its parts.