Film Review: HOTEL MUMBAI

WDCB’s Gary Zidek reviews HOTEL MUMBAI.

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The new film HOTEL MUMBAI offers a fictionalized account of real life terrorist attacks that took place in 2008.  Over the course of three days, a group of young jihadists unleashed a series of coordinated attacks in the Indian city of Mumbai. Targets included a train station, a hospital, 3 hotels, and a Jewish community center. By the time it ended approximately 170 people had been killed.

 HOTEL MUMBAI is the first feature length film from Australian filmmaker Anthony Maras, who co-wrote the script and directed.

On the surface, the movie’s plot may sound like a version of DIE HARD, terrorists over take a building with bad intentions, as unsuspecting heroes work to save people …

Except that the extreme, realistic violence depicted in HOTEL MUMBAI will fill viewers with uncomfortable dread rather than action movie escapism. Maras decides to leave very little to the imagination showing each murder in graphic detail.

HOTEL MUMBAI features an ensemble cast including, Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Anupam Kher, and Nazanin Boniadi. The film is extremely effective in conveying the terror and helplessness of a terrorist attack. And is technically sound, the action sequences are shot well. But the script is lacking in several areas, the villains are one note and there’s little time to development the “hero” characters trying to survive the nightmare.

I give HOTEL MUMBAI 1.5 stars out of four. It’s playing at theaters everywhere.