Hotel Mumbai 2018

     This film is the true story of the 2008 siege of the famed Taj Hotel.  The hotel was stormed by a group of terrorists in Mumbai, India.  Man of the dedicated hotel staff chose to risk their lives to protect their guests.  Among them were renowned chef Hermant Oberoir and waiter Arjun.  The world is watching what is going on at this Hotel.  A desperate couple are forced to made unthinkable sacrifices to protect their newborn child.

     Many of the scenes are uneasy and unnerving, a tough film to shake!!  There are other ways to tell this story without a focus on the body count?  Very little insights are given from any political perspectives?  This film does serve as a reminder that heroism can come to the forefront during very stressful and extreme situations.  Since the emphasis is on extreme bad instances of the attack, I did not enjoy watching this film!!  1 1/2* (I did not like this film)

  

123 min, Drama directed by Anthony Maras with Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Amandeep Singh, Suhail Nayyar, Manoj Mehra, Dinesh Kumar, Amriptal Singh, Kapil Kumar Netra, Adithi Kalkunte, Alex Pinder, Vipin Sharma, Tilda Cobham-Hervey.

Note:  Imdb 7.5 out of 10, Rotten Tomatoes 77% critic 85% audience, Metacritic 64 out of 100 with 30 critics 7.4* user score with 60 reviews (positive 47, mixed 10, negative 3), Roger Ebert 2 ½* Tomris Laffly, RollingStone 3* out of 5* Peter Travers, The Washington Post 3* out of 4* Michael O’Sullivan, Letterboxd average 3.7* out of 5*, Amazon 4.6* out of 5* with 185 reviews.

Special Note:  Filmed in Adelaide Studios Glenside and Adelaide, South Australia; Mumbai, Maharastra, India and St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai, India.  The filmmakers were given access to the original transcripts of the intercepted cell phone calls between the ten terrorists and their handlers.  Actual television footage is also featured in this film.  Dev Patel danced on a particular train platform for the film Slumdog Millionaire.  A month after Slumdog was in theaters, Dev saw a terrorist attack on the same platform.  When scripts were circulated telling the story of the attack, he knew he wanted to be a part of it.  These are the spoken languages in this film, English, Hindi, Urdu, Punjabi, Russian, Persian, Greek Marathi and Arabic.  A memorial monument was erected in the lobby at the Taj Palace Hotel in 2010 to commemorate the victims and fatalities.