hotel mumbai movie reviews

Hotel Mumbai

How do we establish a proper ethics code around a narrative film that dramatically recreates an act of real-life terrorism? How much time do we need to allow between the tragedy’s actual occurrence and its Hollywood-ized on-screen reflection, with which people would eventually fill their entertainment-hungry eyeballs while munching on their popcorn? When should these movies be released—is the unlucky timing right after a deadly attack in Christchurch, New Zealand a touch … insensitive? Taking it a step further, do these films that give unspeakable carnage, like the Mumbai terror attacks of 2008, a “ The Poseidon Adventure ” action movie treatment, need to be made? I won’t pretend to have the answers to these questions. I will just say, it’s complicated—cinema has always served as a reflection of its times and storytellers are still feeling their way through the unique horrors of the 21 st Century. And we aren’t even a quarter of the way there yet.

I bring up these questions because they kept crawling in my mind as I watched and wrestled with Anthony Maras ’ searing, startlingly confident debut “Hotel Mumbai,” where every fatal bullet fired out of the ruthless terrorists’ semi-automatic weapons hit me at my core. I must admit: this skilled, historical action film was one of the toughest, most disquieting sits I can remember in a while—tougher than Paul Greengrass ’ “July 22” and on par with the same filmmaker’s masterful “ United 93 .” So much that I almost ( almost ) resented Maras’ first-rate filmmaking chops and unflinching command of camera and action that managed to mentally and physically place me among the countless victims and survivors of the majestic Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where the majority of his film (co-written by Maras and John Collee ) is set.

A small amount of relief: In “Hotel Mumbai,” the writing duo persistently emphasizes the complex humanity of the characters. In that, we are not just watching a jingoistic, thinly sketched battle between the good and the bad. There are shades of nuance in the good here and an abusive hierarchy within the evil, delicately portrayed not to make the audience feel for the terrorists but to help them understand the chilling indestructibly of terror networks and the terrorist mindset. The ones that murder dozens at random in the hotel are a group of merciless yet disposable men; brainwashed by religious lies, radicalized and sent to carry out massacres by the powerful those who coldly give commands at the other end of a phone line.

Before we reach the glorious hotel, Maras swiftly familiarizes us with the players, starting with the Lashkar-e-Taiba jihadists, who approach the city by boats and begin their fatal attacks across the bustling metropolis, including a major transportation hub and a restaurant. We then meet the happily married father Arjun (an astonishingly brave Dev Patel , carrying most of the narrative), an employee and waiter at the Taj, who is about to lose a lucrative shift of large tips after misplacing his shoes. His (soon-to-be-a-hero) boss Hemant Oberoi (the legendary Anupam Kher of “ The Big Sick ”) surely won’t let him run his errands in sandals at such a highbrow, first-class establishment that takes pride in treating the guests as God. Borrowing a pair too small for his feet at the last minute (a tiny but rich detail you will hold on to while following him), Arjun earns his spot back in the service roster. The evening would be populated by a number of VIP guests, including an arrogant, womanizing Russian businessman ( Jason Isaacs with a curious accent) and a well-off family consisting of the architect David ( Armie Hammer , excellent with little to do), his wife Zahra ( Nazanin Boniadi , who steals the film), their newborn baby (his cries while in-hiding are a recurring source of suspense) and a heroic babysitter ( Tilda Cobham-Hervey ).

The characters (apart from Oberoi) are fictional for the most part and come with plenty of dramatic embellishments that supplement the basic story. Along the way, phones run out of battery (among the most Hollywood plot details that repeat), families get separated, egotism becomes certain individuals’ worst enemy and racial profiling plagues a group of exhausted survivors’ unity. Thankfully, Maras and Collee don’t give white privilege an easy pass when the circumstances grow direr by the second. (Except, in an earlier scene, they somehow grant David the overconfidence to order an extremely Americanized burger meal at Taj’s world-class restaurant.) Maras establishes unassailable directorial authority throughout, guiding the viewer through a maze of rooms, hallways and backdoor escape routes with clear orientation, even when one loses count of the fallen bodies. Nick Remy Matthews’ documentary-like cinematography and the work of co-editors Maras and Peter McNulty weave together a massive canvas, making all of it feel like a claustrophobic horror film unfolding in real-time.

Still, after the substantially scaled catastrophe comes to an end, the question remains: what do we do with all this filmmaking dexterity when it serves an effort that, despite the best of intentions, feels exploitative and too soon? I will leave that decision up to you, as I suspect the answer will depend on your tolerance level. For my part, I will look forward to seeing what the promising Maras does next.

Tomris Laffly

Tomris Laffly is a freelance film writer and critic based in New York. A member of the New York Film Critics Circle (NYFCC), she regularly contributes to RogerEbert.com , Variety and Time Out New York, with bylines in Filmmaker Magazine, Film Journal International, Vulture, The Playlist and The Wrap, among other outlets.

Armie Hammer as David
Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Sally
Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Bree
Dev Patel as Arjun
Jason Isaacs as Vasili
Anupam Kher as Hemant Oberoi
Nazanin Boniadi as Zahra
Anthony Maras
Peter McNulty
John Collee

Cinematographer

Nick Remy Matthews
Volker Bertelmann

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Hotel Mumbai Reviews

This is no sanitized account. It’s gritty and admittedly tough to watch. But it could also be one of the more authentic portrayals of its kind. It certainly left me rattled.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 21, 2022

The first great film of 2019. A visceral, pulse-pounding, frenetic docudrama held together with extraordinary technique by Maras. Imagine, a Hollywood film based on real events that depicts men and women of diversity as honest-to-God real-life heroes.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Aug 18, 2022

Still, "Hotel Mumbai" marks an impressive feature debut for Maras, despite the fact that his script at times lapses into 1970s disaster movie characterizations. (You'll know them when you see them).

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jun 14, 2022

A nicely executed thriller that looks beyond the terror to focus on the resilience of the human spirit in the face of surreal adversity.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 4, 2021

Despite its lack of focus on its characters, Hotel Mumbai emerges as a very tense viewing experience.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Aug 16, 2020

It dives right into the brutality without enough depth, making for an uneasy balance of real-life tragedy and titillating action fare.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 27, 2020

Although some scenes invite a minuscule moral reflection, it omits the causes to underline the effects, using a recalcitrant violence that at times falls into a trifle that prevents proper narrative development. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 25, 2020

At a certain point, it's impossible not to feel every death or injury in your gut. Hotel Mumbai does a great service in telling this story.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jul 21, 2020

[Dev Patel] brings the right mix of stoicism and bewilderment.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 15, 2020

Overall, Hotel Mumbai isn't an easy watch in the sense that it does bring back some very painful memories; but cinematically it is a solid and gritty retelling of an extremely tragic moment in our recent history. 4 Quints out of 5!

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 10, 2020

At one point I started shaking in my seat. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Jul 7, 2020

Somehow it works. The film is a rollercoaster of emotion, inciting anger, fear and anxiety in the viewers.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jul 6, 2020

The characters aren't quite as strong as the pulse-racing plot.

Full Review | Original Score: 6/10 | Jul 2, 2020

A brilliant new docudrama.

Full Review | May 29, 2020

The movie's coda cements the overarching message of extolling heroism and the survivors' refusal to let terror define them. But that moral still rings a little hollow.

Full Review | Mar 24, 2020

Maras has crafted a film full of instances that are hard to forget: it's the shaping them into a story that still needs work.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Mar 12, 2020

HOTEL MUMBAI is excellent at creating tension, but terrible at turning it into any meaningful empathy with or understanding of its wider roster of characters, despite the best efforts of Dev Patel.

Full Review | Feb 13, 2020

The star glitter notwithstanding, authenticity and generous production spend inform every frame.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2020

Much attention with this one: A fierce, almost unbearably intense recreation of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2018. The characters don't get much development, but the story is as compelling as it gets.

Full Review | Feb 6, 2020

Hotel Mumbai doesn't exploit. It chronicles the randomness of violence, and the ordinary heroism and decency of people forced to confront terrorism. Everyone should see this movie, because it could happen to you.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 29, 2020

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‘hotel mumbai’: film review | tiff 2018.

Armie Hammer and Dev Patel topline an ensemble cast in 'Hotel Mumbai,' director Anthony Maras’ fictionalized account of the Mumbai attacks, which world premiered in Toronto.

By Jordan Mintzer

Jordan Mintzer

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Going to great lengths to depict, in nail-biting detail and with an impressive you-are-there quality, the terrorist attacks that targeted Mumbai and its legendary Taj Mahal Palace Hotel back in 2008, director Anthony Maras’ feature debut truly covers the event from all angles: the wealthy guests whose holidays transformed into a collective nightmare; the hotel staff who bravely stuck around and risked their lives; the cops who were overwhelmed by an unprecedented crisis; and the terrorists themselves, who mercilessly gunned down the innocent for a cause they too would die for.

Yet what’s missing in Hotel Mumbai , which had its world premiere in Toronto, is something close to an actual point of view. Eschewing any probing political or social commentary to focus solely on the event itself, while offering up a triumph-over-adversity tale we’ve seen too many times before, the film is both gripping in its execution — although a two-hours-plus running time feels a bit stretched — and totally bland in what it’s trying to say, with characters who don’t really stand out onscreen. Still, the true story could find a decent following both in the U.S., where Bleecker Street picked up the rights after original rightsholders The Weinstein Co. fell apart, as well as overseas.

The Bottom Line A harrowing recreation of a horrible event. But what else?

Set during what feels like one never-ending night (in reality the ordeal lasted for three days), the script — by Maras and John Collee ( Happy Feet , Master and Commander) — covers the hotel attack from top to bottom, following about a dozen characters from different backgrounds who find themselves caught in various parts of the immense building when the shootings begin.

There are the recently married lovebirds, David ( Armie Hammer ) and Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi), whose infant baby is stuck upstairs with their nanny, Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). There’s the womanizing Russian businessman (Jason Isaacs, doing the accent et al). There are the faithful members of the Taj staff, especially the quick-on-his-feet waiter, Arjun (Dev Patel), and the courageous head chef, Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher). And there are the four assailants (Amandeep Singh, Suhail Nayyar, Yash Trivedi, Gaurav Paswala), who roam the lobby and hallways armed to the teeth, taking out guests and employees in a completely cold-blooded fashion.

With only a handful of shorts to his name, Maras does an excellent job on such an ambitious first feature, covering every corner of the hotel and making each gunshot or explosion feel like the real thing. And while he cuts away to omit the more gruesome violence, the film never ignores the truly horrific nature of the attacks — especially in a disturbing scene where the hotel receptionists are forced at gunpoint to talk guests out of their rooms, then are summarily executed for refusing.

The level of verisimilitude is so high that when Maras cuts in actual documentary footage, it’s hard to tell it apart from the fiction. Craft contributions, including uncanny set design by Steven Jones-Evans ( The Railway Man ) and kinetic cinematography by Nick Remy Matthews (also making his feature debut), enhance the idea that these are real events — or at least as close to reality as a movie can be.

Yet as you watch people getting shot left and right while the principals remain alive, at least for the time being, you start to wonder at one point: Why am I sitting though this? Perhaps if the characters felt like more than mere two-dimensional beings (the heroic dad, the loyal waiter, the frightened babysitter, the decadent Russian, the regretful terrorist), there would be something to maintain our interest, but all you can really do in Hotel Mumbai is wait for more bodies to drop until a rescue squad arrives. (The film repeatedly points out how the closest SWAT team was 800 miles away in New Delhi, which is why it took so long to liberate the hostages.)

The Scene at Toronto Film Festival 2018 (Photos)

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‘Hotel Mumbai’ Review: Terrorism as Popcorn Movie?

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By Ben Kenigsberg

March 21, 2019

Like “United 93,” “Hotel Mumbai” begins from the uncomfortable premise of turning an actual terrorist incident into material for a dramatized suspense feature. In November 2008, 10 men unleashed gunfire and grenade assaults across Mumbai , killing more than 160 people.

The film, inspired by a documentary, “Surviving Mumbai,” relays these events from the vantage points of a sprawling international ensemble. The characters, many of them composites, are the guests and staff members of the Taj Mahal Palace & Tower Hotel, one of two luxury hotels the terrorists targeted, and where more than 30 died during the siege.

An affluent couple (Nazanin Boniadi and Armie Hammer) leave their newborn upstairs with the nanny (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) to enjoy their dinner date in the hotel restaurant. A high-rolling Russian (Jason Isaacs) plans to spend the evening cavorting with local escorts. The heroic hotel employees include the head chef (Anupam Kher) and a Sikh waiter (Dev Patel) who shows up to work that day without proper footwear but begs to stay, needing the shift.

Anthony Maras, making his first feature, interweaves these threads with precision and clarity, conveying an impressive sense of the hotel layout, the confusion of the circumstances and the visceral fear of hiding from the gunmen. (The opulent hotel was re-created in both Mumbai and Adelaide, Australia.)

But the more involving “Hotel Mumbai” plays in the moment, the queasier it seems in retrospect. It reduces the randomness of real-life bloodshed to the slick thrills of a popcorn movie. And after the mosque attacks in Christchurch, which led the film’s distributor in New Zealand to suspend the movie’s release there, its savagery is especially difficult to take.

Rated R. Unceasing violence. In English, Urdu and Hindi, with English subtitles. Running time: 2 hours 3 minutes.

Film Review: ‘Hotel Mumbai’

Like rubbernecking at the scene of a global tragedy, Anthony Maras' ambitious docudrama uneasily re-creates the 2008 Mumbai attacks ... to what end?

By Peter Debruge

Peter Debruge

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'Hotel Mumbai' Review: Terrorist Docudrama Stuns, Deeply Unsettles

Who’s to blame for popularizing reenactments of real-life terrorist attacks? Should we point the finger at “United 93” director Paul Greengrass, or maybe Steven Spielberg’s morally gray “Munich” a year earlier? The entire genre traces back to Gillo Pontecorvo’s game-changing “The Battle of Algiers” in 1966, which challenged our ideas of on-screen realism by posing as a cinema vérité newsreel. Even so, such re-creations didn’t become chic until after 9/11, when action movies in which folks such as Sean Connery and Arnold Schwarzenegger saved the day from terrorist plots gave way to those in which successful attacks became the focus.

There’s little doubt that “ Hotel Mumbai ” director Anthony Maras has seen all these movies and then some, although what’s not so clear is why he felt compelled to tell the story of the 2008 Mumbai attacks — a series of 12 separate terror incidents that culminated in the bloody siege on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where the bulk of the film takes place, and where stars such as Armie Hammer and Dev Patel mix with unknowns to portray how real people reacted to those events. Sitting through the harrowing events again nearly a decade later could hardly be described as entertainment, and the film plays to many of the same unseemly impulses that make disaster movies so compelling, exploiting the tragedy of the situation for spectacle’s sake. Here, Maras’ intent seems to be a chance for audiences to consider that universal question: “What would you do if you found yourself in the same situation?”

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Based on hundreds of hours of firsthand research by Maras and co-writer John Collee, who interviewed survivors and witnesses of the three-day ordeal, “Hotel Mumbai” aims to present a reliable image of what actually happened during that period when 10 members of Islamic terrorist organization Lashkar-e-Taiba turned the Indian metropolis into a scene of panic and confusion. And yet, as someone who lived in New York on the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks and in Paris during the 11/13 Bataclan shooting, I can attest that it captures very little of either — not the normal human response, as adrenaline takes over rational thinking under such intense circumstances, nor the scariest feeling of all: that even in the era of instant Twitter updates and pervasive news coverage, it’s impossible to know what’s going on beyond your immediate experience when something like this happens. You may hear sirens in the distance, but is that a sign that help is on the way or indications of a fresh attack somewhere else in town? (As it happens, the same siege was the subject of another film, Nicolas Saada’s “Taj Mahal,” told from the perspective of a terrified French teenager trapped in one of the rooms — and while that movie isn’t nearly as technically accomplished, it does more closely approximate the experience of being there, cut off from the kind of information that could save your life.)

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That’s not to say “Hotel Mumbai” isn’t impressive or gripping. As debut features go, it’s a formidable achievement, delivering on the promise shown by Maras’ harrowing 2011 short “The Palace,” which earned him two Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards — and the chance to make this movie. Depicting the 1974 Turkish invasion of Cyprus from the p.o.v. of characters hiding in cupboards, “The Palace” was good practice for the way Maras approaches the attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel 30-odd years later.

As in Greengrass’ “United 93,” the film opens by introducing (and in some way humanizing) the nervous young jihadists preparing to carry out the strikes for which they have been trained by someone known only as “the Bull” back in Pakistan, before shifting its focus to the predominantly white collection of characters caught in the mayhem. Maras follows a pair of gunmen into a restroom of the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus train station, where they load their weapons before opening fire on the crowded public space (we see only their escape, as news reports describe the carnage), kicking off the terror spree. Some time later, at the Café Leopold not far from the Taj Hotel, Australian tourists are sorting the bill when another terrorist tosses a bomb into the building, opening fire on the survivors.

These scenes are worse than nearly anything one can imagine in a horror movie, not just because they actually happened but for the way they open the door to an entirely new kind of nightmare: For those visiting Mumbai that late November day, there was no reason to think anything like this was possible, but the truth is, it could happen anywhere.

Still, the first third of the movie feels especially disorganized, juggling the introduction and arrival of many characters (absurdly enough, it starts to feel like a cross between “The Grand Budapest Hotel” and “Clue”) with the outbreak of violence. As the movie goes on, the many narrative strands seem to converge, taking excellent advantage of the spaces Maras’ production design team so meticulously dressed to suggest the Taj hotel (exteriors are the real deal, embellished by CGI).

Stunningly framed and photographed, then later desaturated to give things the cool, neutral feel Maras wanted, DP Nick Remy Matthews’ outstanding footage sometimes clashes with the melodrama it contains. Or perhaps it’s the weirdly uneven performances, delivered in a nine languages, that don’t fit the film’s visual striking aesthetic. It can’t help that Maras likes to intermix the most terrifying details with absurdist humor, as when the four Islamist gunmen, apparently unfazed by murdering infidels, are confronted with doing things that challenge their beliefs, like reaching into a woman’s shirt, or accidentally eating haram canapés containing pork.

In depicting the characters’ behavior, what ethical obligation does Maras have to be accurate to the events of that night, or is it enough to channel the spirit of everyone’s behavior? For example, what do we make of Hammer’s character, a traditional “white savior” type who leaves his place of safety to check in on the infant son (and his nanny) that he’d left upstairs but later jeopardizes both of their lives? Why give him such a prominent role when so many of the Indian characters — the exceptions being Patel’s Arjun, a kitchen worker who’s also worried about his wife and child, and Anupam Kher, who plays master chef Hemant Oberoi — are reduced to just a scene or two?

But “Hotel Mumbai” doesn’t subscribe to traditional notions of heroism, providing no one even remotely action star-like to stand up to the gunmen. The puny local police squad appear clumsy and completely out of their depth, posing little threat to the terrorists. It took Indian Special Forces many hours to arrive on the scene, during which time, hotel guests and staff were repeatedly forced to decide between the most immediate impulse for survival (several employees take the opportunity to protect themselves and go home) and the far more selfless choice of risking their lives in hopes of saving others. Whatever else it may offer to audiences — vicarious thrills, emotional catharsis — “Hotel Mumbai” serves as a testament to those remarkable individuals.

Reviewed at Toronto Film Festival (Special Presentations), Sept. 7, 2018. Running time: 122 MIN.

Production: A Bleecker Street release, presented with Shivhans Pictures, of a (Int'l. sales: Arclight Films, Los Angeles.) Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Gary Hamilton, Mike Gabrawy, Julie Ryan, Andrew Ogilvie, Jomon Thomas.
Crew: Director: Anthony Maras. Screenplay: John Collee, Maras. Producers: Basil Iwanyk, Gary Hamilton, Mike Gabrawy, Julie Ryan, Andrew Ogilvie, Jomon Thomas. Armie Hammer, Dev Patel, Nazanin Boniadi, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Anupam Kher, Jason Isaacs. (English, Arabic, Hindi, Russian dialogue)
With: Armie Hammer, Dev Patel, Nazanin Boniadi , Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Anupam Kher, Jason Isaacs. (English, Hindi, Punjabi, Marathi, Urdu, Greek, Farsi, Russian, Arabic dialogue)

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DVD & Streaming

Hotel Mumbai

Drama , Mystery/Suspense

Content Caution

In Theaters

March 22, 2019
Dev Patel as Arjun; Armie Hammer as David; Nazanin Boniadi as Zahra; Anupam Kher as chef Hemant Oberoi; Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Sally; Jason Isaacs as Vasili; Alex Pinder as butler Jim; Amandeep Singh as Imran; Suhail Nayyar as Abdullah; Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Bree

Home Release Date

June 18, 2019
Anthony Maras

Distributor

Bleecker Street

Movie Review

Bullets scream through the Indian air—hitting walls, hitting windows, hitting bodies with a spray of blood.

It’s Nov. 26, 2009, and terrorists stalk the streets of Mumbai like wolves on the hunt. They rip through a subway station, killing 58. They tear apart a café, killing another 10. Taxis blow up. Tourists are gunned down. The attacks are coordinated, swift, obviously lethal.

Before the attacks, Mumbai had become a symbol of the resurgent, rapidly developing country of India—its power and progress and newfound wealth. That made it a natural target for the disenfranchised. As we watch the terrorists prowl through Mumbai’s avenues and allies, a cleric—speaking to his lackeys through earpieces—reminds them of just how disenfranchised they are.

“Look at all they’ve stolen,” the unseen imam tells them. “From your fathers. From your grandfathers. … Remember, the whole world will be watching.”

The Taj has seen such things before.

The Taj Mahal Palace Hotel sits by the Gateway of India like a jewel, just as it has since 1903. It was the only hotel in India with electricity when it was built. And for more than a century it’s where Maharajas and Mountbattens alike met and ate and stayed. The place has lost none of its luster by 2009: The flowers in the lobby are perfectly cut, the floors perfectly polished, the bottles of chardonnay perfectly chilled. In Mumbai’s frenetic heart, the Taj has always been a cool center of moneyed civility—an oasis amid the city’s chaos.

“Here at the Taj, guest is god,” head chef Hemant Oberoi intones to his staff. They solemnly nod their heads in agreement.

Even on a day like today, when Mumbai’s streets run with fresh blood, the Taj stands unflappable.

Until the first terrorists enter the lobby.

Guests are gods?

Now, the staff must try to ensure that the guests aren’t dead.

Positive Elements

The worst of tragedies can inspire the best in its victims. And the terrorist attacks on the Taj boldly illustrate that dynamic. It’s especially true of the Taj’s staff, led by chef Hemant Oberoi. Even though the staff can escape through some back-channel stairways, Hemant reminds his staff, “Our guests can’t. Not all of them.” And while he says employees are free to go if they wish—especially if they have spouses and children and other family who depend on them—most of them stay.

“I’ve been here 35 years,” says a Taj butler. “This is my home.”

“Guest is god, sir,” another echoes. Many risk their lives to protect those guests, with some even sacrificing themselves in the process.

Perhaps no character is so explicit a hero as Arjun, a waiter for one of the Taj’s posh restaurants. He shepherds dozens to safety at great risk to himself, and he proves to be an instrumental player in the police response to the terror attack.

But some guests, too, show moments of heroism. The story focuses especially on a young, well-heeled family: Zahra; her American husband, David; and their infant son, who’s watched over by a nanny named Sally. David and Zahra are eating at a restaurant when the terrorists attack, and they go to dangerous lengths to reunite with their baby. Sally risks her life to protect the child as well.

We also meet a mysterious and deeply unlikeable Russian named Vasili who, when the chips are down, makes some smart decisions (and commits a risky act of bravery) to save people.

Spiritual Elements

Religion is everywhere here—not just in passing, but as a critical motivator both for heroes and villains alike. Let’s begin with the latter.

The real-life terrorist attacks on the Taj were perpetrated by an Islamic extremist organization called Lashkar-e-Taiba. While the group isn’t called out by name in the film, its religious affiliation is never in doubt: The first words we hear in the movie come from that always-unseen cleric: “I am with you,” he says. “God is with you. Paradise awaits you. God is great.” Throughout the film, the cleric’s voice exhorts his terrorist agents to commit heinous acts of violence against innocent people, all in the name of Allah. He calls it a holy jihad, saying “None of them deserve Allah’s mercy.”

The terrorists are deeply, violently pious: They all know they’ll be dying at the conclusion of this reign of terror, but they’re committed to seeing the thing through to the end. (One man calls his parents and asks if they’ve gotten the money the organization promised to pay them—presumably for his impending martyrdom. When the father answers no, the son says, “Make sure you do. They swore it on the holy Quran.”)

We see other evidence of their faith, too. When one terrorist gobbles up a stray bit of food, for instance, his associate tells him to spit it out quickly, since it’s made of pork. And when he’s ordered to kill a hostage who unexpectedly begins praying an Islamic prayer, he’s horrifically conflicted—despite the fact that the cleric (located in Pakistan) insists that he pull the trigger.

Zahra’s also at least nominally Muslim—or, at least, her parents are. She calls them to assure them that she’s all right. But when her mother implores her to pray, Zahra resists: “Prayers? What good have prayers ever done for us, mother?” But Zahra’s mother says that she’ll pray for her, anyway.

Arjun is a Sikh, and he bows briefly before an incense-laden image as if in brief prayer. When an elderly guest (who’s terrified of the Muslim attackers in the hotel) expresses concern over Arjun’s beard and traditional turban (which she erroneously associates with Islam), Arjun walks over to her and explains the sacred nature of his head garb¬. He tells her it’s a symbol of “honor and courage,” and that he’s never gone outside without it since he was a little boy.

“If it would make you feel comfortable, I will take it off,” he adds, a selfless confession on his part. “Would you like that?”

“No,” the woman finally says. “I’m just scared.”

Later, though, Arjun does unwind the turban—using it as a bandage to stem the flow of blood from an injured woman’s wound.

A terrorist rips a chain with a Christian cross attached to it from someone’s neck—triggering a violent reaction from the man to whom the cross belongs to. We repeatedly hear several people say, “Thank God!”

Guests at the hotel receive the Hindu bindi on their foreheads upon arrival and hear the traditional Hindu greeting of “Namaste.” We see a Christian church near the Taj. David makes the mistake of trying to order a hamburger—typically made, obviously, from an animal sacred in India.

Sexual Content

Vasili looks through a stack of pictures of high-class prostitutes for a “party’ in his room. He calls their “manager” and asks about two and the size of their nipples before asking the man to “send them both.” The hotel is well aware of this “party,” and plans to send a staff member up to serve there. Hemant says he won’t allow a woman staffer to work the party, though: “We can’t have a repeat of last time,” he says. (The man who does get the job seems excited for the opportunity, in small part because of the women who will be there.)

A woman takes a shower: she strips down to her bra and underwear and, later, we see her in the shower from the shoulders up. A man makes angry references to having sex with someone’s mother and sister.

We learn that Zahra and husband David are married, but weren’t when their baby was born. (Staff members are ordered to not mention the wedding.) Later, we see the couple’s naked baby.

A woman dies in a hotel hallway. A terrorist is told by the unseen cleric to reach into her bra in search for identification. “She’s an infidel,” the cleric insists. “It’s not a sin.”

Violent Content

More than 170 people died in the real-life terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and sometimes it feels like we see all of them here. The camera rarely looks away from a bloody act of violence.

We see dozens of people gunned down by mostly expressionless terrorists. Sometimes the gunmen pour bullets behind counters or under tables, making sure their victims are truly dead. When people try to make a run for safety, the terrorists are often on the spot, pouring bullets into their bodies. We see an elderly maid—who’s already shot in the gut—try to find safety in a guest room bathroom. The terrorists find her, though, and kill her with nary a thought. Assailants, pursued by a police vehicle filled with law-enforcement officials, get out of their own car and pump the police car with lead, obviously killing everyone inside.

The terrorists then commandeer the vehicle and pull out a dead body or two, setting off to create more bloody havoc. Several people are executed, with gunmen pointing and firing at their heads from point-blank range. (We see the bloody aftermath.)

We quickly learn the idea is to kill as many people as possible, with an emphasis on executing well-heeled foreign tourists (especially Americans). The unseen cleric insists that he wants the terrorists’ microphones to be left open at all times. “I want to hear their cries with my own ears,” he says.

Terrorists throw grenades into the Taj lobby, killing or injuring several people. A tourist finds her way to the Taj, suffering from a bad, bloody wound. A doctor tells onlookers that she needs to get to a hospital, but she’s killed before she can make it there.

Someone jumps from a window. We don’t see him land, but we hear a sickening crack. As the man’s being drug away, we can see that his leg is bent unnaturally. Another man is beaten almost to death: His face is covered with bloody wounds, and he spits out blood when he spits out insults to his captors.

Cars burn. Bombs go off. Terrorists pour gasoline all around the inside of the Taj, and we see the place (both inside in the movie and outside during real news footage) on fire.

Crude or Profane Language

More than 20 f-words and three s-words. We also hear uses of “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard” and “h—.” God’s name is misused about five times.

Drug and Alcohol Content

While locked away in a posh lounge, Vasili takes advantage of the liquor there. (He remarks on a 20-year-old single-malt Scotch.) Arjun makes some wine recommendations to guests during dinner, and he clearly knows something about a particularly rare (and hard-to-pronounce) variety of cognac. Someone finds and opens a bottle of champagne in a guest room. Someone else smokes.

Other Negative Elements

It’s bad enough to kill people. Somehow, it seems even worse to lie in order to kill still more. Terrorists knock on doors, pretending to be rescue personnel, then shoot whoever comes to answer. They force hotel staff to call other guests, promising them that everything will be all right. Then, if and when the staff refuses, they execute them on the spot. One snags the ID from a real, dead policeman in the hope of gaining entry to a secure location.

Some guests can be pretty nasty, too. One of them puts other guests in danger when he calls the press, letting them know of the group’s plans. (The terrorists are watching the news, in part, to monitor what’s going on inside and outside the hotel.) We see a squat toilet inside a public restroom. Someone may try to vomit up some food.

Religion poisons everything. So the late Christopher Hitchens told us in his book God Is Not Great .

An avid Hitchens reader might point to Hotel Mumbai and declare it Exhibit A in his anti-faith argument. After all, the attackers were deeply religious¬—inspired by their faith (which has been twisted by that unseen cleric) to commit outrageous acts of butchery.

And certain moments could reinforce that interpretation. A sympathetic victim initially rejects prayer. The story’s hero, Arjun, metaphorically sheds the symbol of his own faith—his turban—to help someone else. And when Hemant tells a guest, “I’ll be praying for you,” the guest responds angrily. “F— your prayers,” he says. “That’s what started this s—.”

But if we take one more step into the movie’s religious waters, we see that it’s really about (among many other things) how religion influences everything. And when we find ourselves pressed beyond endurance, most of us turn¬—or return—to God.

One character who initially eschews prayer eventually returns to it. A Christian man—who, for most of the movie, acts anything but Christian—finds that the cross around his neck is wildly important to him when he’s close to death.

In the typical world of the Taj, filled as it is with conveniences and luxuries and obscene wealth, “guest is god.” It’s easy in such circumstances to forget about the real one. But when all of our material gifts are stripped away, when our lives become less about how we’re going to spend the evening and more about living through it, we turn our eyes heavenward.

This is not to excuse the movie of its excesses, of which there are many. Based on the real 2009 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, and especially on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, Hotel Mumbai feels urgent and real, and the copious levels of blood we see impact us deeper than they would in, say, a slasher flick. The language can be harsh, too, and of course, we see lots of religions on display.

Hotel Mumbai shows us the terror we find in terrorism. And while it offers elements of hope and courage and sacrifice, too, it’s not enough to wash the blood off the Taj’s once-gleaming floors.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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Hotel Mumbai

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Hotel Mumbai Movie Review : A gripping, gut-wrenching watch

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Refrain from posting comments that are obscene, defamatory or inflammatory, and do not indulge in personal attacks, name calling or inciting hatred against any community. Help us delete comments that do not follow these guidelines by marking them offensive . Let's work together to keep the conversation civil.

Uday Panchpor 1427 days ago

The movie should have been promoted well. The publicity of the movie failed to reach the target audience hence a good movie could not gain the deserved market share

Taruna Varshney 1502 days ago

Gaana User 1505 days ago

And yet in the midst of the chaos, mayhem and bloodshed, what stands out is how ordinary people emerge as extraordinary humans, displaying exemplary courage. Like Chef Oberoi, whose calm and collected demeanor never lets out any fear he may have been feeling or even Arjun’s selflessness when he goes out of his way to save as many people as possible. And it is heartbreaking to watch the othe

Gaana User 1507 days ago

The movie is based on true event of taj hotel in Mumbai which are well represented.

Mr. Maar-Lega 1529 days ago

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Hotel Mumbai Review

27 Sep 2019

Hotel Mumbai

Hotel Mumbai , the debut feature from short filmmaker Anthony Maras, puts you right in the heart of the darkest days of modern Indian history. Over a three day-period in 2008, ten Pakistani terrorists occupied the opulent Taj Mahal hotel, shooting at random in the name of Islam. Well acted and impressively shot, Maras’ film does a great job in making you feel the heat of the moment, but doesn’t have the depths or insight to do any more than that.

The movie begins like classic disaster movie fare, introducing the disparate major players whose fates will become inextricably intertwined. On the hotel staff, we meet quick thinking waiter Arjun ( Dev Patel ), and head chef Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher, excellent playing a real-life figure), constantly telling his staff, “The guest is god.” The guests getting the five-star treatment include newlyweds David ( Armie Hammer ) and Zahra ( Nazanin Boniadi ), whose infant baby is looked after by nanny Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), and Jason Isaacs as a lecherous Russian businessman, who starts the movie as comic relief but eventually gets to show different, more caring colours. Interestingly, Maras arguably gives more grace notes to the terrorists rather than the mostly one-dimensional staff and guests, be it pure delight in discovering a hotel toilet (“They have a machine to flush their shit”), a jape over eating pork, or revealing they are just frightened kids at heart in a moving telephone call home to dad.

Maras makes stretches of Hotel Mumbai absolutely harrowing.

Where the film really scores is Maras’ mounting of the terror, staging the shootings with a matter-of-fact horror, energised but not glamourised by Nick Remy Matthews’ circling, snaking camerawork. Violence is often over as quickly as it erupts, meaning some of the more horrifying scenes involve psychological fear. A sequence in which the terrorists force receptionists to call hotel rooms to tell them rescue teams have arrived is chilling. While it seems impossible to fail to make such true-life events dramatic, Maras makes stretches of Hotel Mumbai absolutely harrowing.

Sadly, there are also ‘movie-movie’ moments that work against the film’s realism — there is an “I’m staying here” sequence amongst the hotel staff akin to “I’m Spartacus” in its brazen drama; Arjun simplistically wins round a racist hotel guest by explaining the significance of his turban; and a montage over a terrorist’s singing capturing all the principals in reflection feels manipulative. But Hotel Mumbai ’s chief failing is that, for all its compelling treatment of a powerful subject matter, it can’t really bring a point of view or perspective to the events, be it politically or sociologically. A Paul Greengrass Picture might have added other angles. For all its cinematic widths, Hotel Mumbai rides along narrow tracks.

Movies | 28 09 2019

‘Hotel Mumbai’ Creates Entertainment Out of Horrific Real-Life Tragedy

By Peter Travers

Peter Travers

If you’re unnerved by movies that exploit real-life tragedy for dramatic momentum ( 22 July, Patriots Day ), Hotel Mumbai is not going to alleviate your concerns as terrorists armed with semi-automatics shoot down hotel guests in India like ducks in a barrel. That said, Aussie director Anthony Maras, in his feature debut, brings a Hitchcockian feel for suspense and a documentarian’s eye for detail to the brutal events that transpired over three days in November 2008 when the Islamist militant group Lashkar-e-Taiba initiated an attack on the city of Mumbai. Many locations were affected, but Maras and Scottish screenwriter John Collee — far from the animated frivolity of Happy Feet — focus on the violence that erupted at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, a.k.a. the Taj, a deluxe retreat for wealthy tourists who insist on the best their mostly Western money can buy. Such infidel decadence inflames the four jihadists (Amandeep Singh, Suhail Nayyar, Yash Trivedi, Gaurav Paswala) who set up shop at the Taj and take their orders from the Bull, an unseen presence in Pakistan who barks orders to kill from his radio and pumps up his charges with promises of the paradise that awaits them in the afterlife.

And we’re off with a cast of characters — composite and completely made up — meant to provide a rooting interest. And they’re predominantly white. Armie Hammer does what he can with the underwritten role of David, an American architect visiting the Taj with his Middle Eastern wife Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi). Leaving their infant child in their room with their live-in nanny, Sally (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), the couple dines at the posh hotel restaurant when the massacre erupts upstairs. Jason Isaacs lays on the accent as a thuggish Russian skirt-chaser, occupying the next table as he tries to organize a prostitute for the night. Maras cuts expertly between these pampered guests and the cold-blooded executions occurring above. One sequence in which hotel receptionists are shot for refusing to talk guests out of their rooms is blood-curdling. The escalating savagery pushes David and even the Russian into uncharacteristically heroic responses meant to save the day.

These invented scenes are pure Hollywood, though Maras works hard to give time to the Indian characters. Dev Patel brings his customary verve and compassion to the role of Arjun, a kitchen worker with a wife and child who nonetheless remains at the Taj to help the guests when he could escape and save his life. And the superb Indian actor Anupam Kher ( Silver Linings Playbook, The Big Sick ) is outstanding in the fact-based role of Hemant Oberoi, the head chef who takes a leadership position in the escape plan. “The guest is God,” is a phrase Oberoi doesn’t just repeat to his staff; he means it.

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Maras deserves credit for not reducing the assassins to villainous caricatures. They’re more like brainwashed pawns in a political game. Even in the chaos of bullets and bombs — kudos to ace cinematographer Nick Remy Matthews — Maras creates a sense of actual lives hanging in the balance. Still, Hotel Mumbai remains an uneasy blend of fact and fiction that feels dwarfed by the documentary footage that ends the film. You can’t quarrel with hard truth. Hotel Mumbai is something else. Releasing the film now, so soon after the grisly carnage in Christchurch, New Zealand, will only fuel the ethical debate about gilding the lily of real-life horror and marketing it as entertainment. There is solid professionalism in the way Hotel Mumbai gets the job done. But to what end? Your call.

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Hotel mumbai.

Common Sense Says
Parents Say 5 Reviews
Kids Say 6 Reviews

Based on 6 kid reviews

Kid Reviews

An underrated masterpiece.

This title has:

Educational value
Great messages
Great role models
Too much swearing

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Too much violence

Great but really brutal movie

Waste of my time, frightening but extremely well made, pretty good movie, what to watch next.

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Hotel Mumbai (2018)

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