“The system is unstable,” the tagline promises, and the system in question is the movie itself. Agnieszka Smoczyńska’s Hot Spot is a sci-fi noir about a private eye named Jan 623 (Andrzej Konopka) who investigates a murder in a society ruled by sentient A.I. He finds a rebel group, his identity unravels, and the world slides into a “hypnotic meltdown.” That sounds like a plot. On screen, it is a mood.
Smoczyńska has a real eye. The film is visually striking, and the 101-minute runtime moves fast. But the story never coheres. The detective’s investigation, the rebels, the digital overlord — they all float in a fog of style without substance. You watch it happen, but you never feel it mean anything.
Trailer, via Focus Features.
Jan 623 and the Murder Case
Konopka carries the film as Jan 623, a private eye whose job is to solve a murder. The case leads him to a rebel group capable of undermining the A.I. that runs everything. That is the entire setup, and the film spends its runtime repeating it rather than deepening it.
Noomi Rapace plays Rana, and the cast also includes Reika Kirishima as Ayka, Filippa Kaye as Maria, George Aurimas Cris as Zen, and Niki Sereti as Bossa. They all show up, deliver lines, and disappear into the haze. No one gets a character arc.
The Feminine Journey Problem
One review quote calls the film “a feminine journey inward through futuristic science-fiction infused neo-noir.” That is a generous reading. The film wants to be that, but it never commits. The inward journey is a promise the script never delivers.
The A.I. villain is vague. The rebel group is vaguer. The murder case, which should anchor the whole thing, becomes an afterthought. By the time the identity unraveling starts, you have stopped caring who anyone is, because the film never gave you a reason to start.
Recycled Dystopia
Variety’s quote hits the nail: the film “conjures not a brave new world but a thriftily recycled one, hanging by a thread onto past manmade glories.” Every dystopian trope is here — the digital overlord, the oppressed masses, the lone investigator — but none of it is assembled into anything new.
The writing, by Robert Bolesto, is thin. The dialogue does not crackle. The plot does not twist. It just drifts. Smoczyńska’s direction keeps the visuals interesting, but interesting images are not a story.
The Numbers Do Not Lie
The film sits at 19% on Rotten Tomatoes, with an average rating of 3.8/10 from 16 critics. The audience score on TMDB is 4.0/10 from 5 votes. The box office is $256,350. Those figures match the experience. This is a film that few people saw and fewer people liked.
Rotten Tomatoes reports only 19% of critics’ reviews as positive. That is not a split decision. That is a dismissal.
Where It Lands
Hot Spot is the kind of film that looks great in a trailer and falls apart in the theater. It has a premise worth exploring — a detective fighting an A.I. god — but it never explores it. It gestures at ideas about identity and control, then leaves them behind.
The film is rated R. That rating comes with the territory of its grim, gray world, but the rating is not the problem. The problem is that the world never comes alive.
The Verdict Is Plain
Smoczyńska has talent. She proves it in every frame. But talent alone does not make a movie work. Hot Spot is a beautiful failure, a film that mistakes atmosphere for meaning and confusion for depth.
It is currently in cinemas.
| Release date | Runtime | Rating | Rotten Tomatoes | Audience score | Box office |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-08-21 | 101 minutes | R | 19% | 4.0/10 | $256,350 |
