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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.

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Hotel Mumbai (2019)

Rated R for disturbing violence throughout, bloody images, and language.

125 minutes

Dev Patel as Arjun

Armie Hammer as David

Nazanin Boniadi as Zahra

Jason Isaacs as Vasili

Anupam Kher as Hemant Oberoi

Natasha Liu Bordizzo as Bree

Tilda Cobham-Hervey as Sally

Anthony Maras
John Collee

Cinematographer

Nick Remy Matthews
Peter McNulty
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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Movie Reviews

In 'hotel mumbai,' grueling violence, depicted with cruel relish.

Danny Hensel

Nazanin Boniadi, Dev Patel, and Armie Hammer star in Hotel Mumbai, a docudrama about the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. Mark Rogers/Bleeker Street Media hide caption

Nazanin Boniadi, Dev Patel, and Armie Hammer star in Hotel Mumbai, a docudrama about the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.

A single moment approaches true serenity in the boilerplate true-terror thriller Hotel Mumbai . The movie depicts the 2008 terror attacks on the Indian city, some of which centered on a standoff at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. I remember the attacks; the smoke billowing from the hotel, the survivors clamoring through broken windows to escape to the ground, several floors below. The movie undertakes to present, in excruciating detail, the day's violence.

That one moment of peace, before all the blood, occurs in the opening moments. A group of ten or so young terrorists — boys in ragged clothes — drift on a small vessel toward Mumbai, a metropolis shrouded in an amber haze. They're listening to instructions from a Brother Bull, an insidious terrorist mastermind dispatching instructions over the phone. The film's remaining two hours curdle into a uniquely 21st-century horror movie, with terrorists as the villains, rapid-fire guns as the weapons, and cell phone batteries as the lifeline to loved ones.

As Hotel Mumbai premieres, we are one week out from a massacre in two New Zealand mosques, a country where this film won't be screened for some time, to prevent collective post-traumatic stress. It's understandable. Hotel Mumbai is a painful watch, one that plunges its viewers into grisly moments of death and terror. It's an exploitation movie that feels truly exploitative, ripped from the headlines of the past decade and unconcerned with the deaths of many of its non-white victims (more on that later). It goes on and on; at two hours, its relentlessly consistent violence becomes unbearable.

Heroes Of The Taj Hotel: Why They Risked Their Lives

Movie interviews, dev patel on the 'driving force' of playing the part of a living person.

While Hotel Mumbai delivers white-knuckle tension, it's of a kind that feels shrewdly calculated, like that of a video game. Everything just seems sort of ... cruelly perfect. As soon as a group of hotel guests shuffle through a door, a gunman wanders through the frame in the background, narrowly missing his prey. In another scene, a woman hides in a closet while a gunman patrols outside. For a moment, the gunman's eyes wander over the elaborately grated door that shields her, but he misses her. She covers the mouth of the baby she's carrying to keep it from crying out, and in the moment, it's impossible not to think of it as a sort of game-level objective: Keep the baby quiet for as long as possible, and survive. In such a harrowing context, the film's presentation comes off as cold and inhumane.

But it's hard to describe a movie that lingers on its characters' faces as long as this one does — even those of the terrorists' — inhumane. And in that sense, there's some small measure of catharsis here. Sure, the majority of our main characters, which include Dev Patel as Arjun, a hotel staffer, Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi as new parents, and Jason Isaacs as a lustful and brash Russian businessman, shed the various flaws that characterize them in by-the-numbers arcs over the course of the attack. But we also spend a lot of time with Imran, played by Amandeep Singh, one of the terrorists who ultimately undergoes a faith crisis triggered by a phone call from his father. He screams in anguish as he realizes that Brother Bull, and by extension his entire belief structure, may be grievously unjust. We watch Imran's face contort; in a film that otherwise strains to convince us that its characters are fully human, this scene locates a moment of simple truth.

Imran is unique in this aspect, however. Otherwise, characters serve as mere plot functions; this effect is most pronounced among the hotel staff, led by a chef played by Bollywood legend Anupam Kher, who perform their duties in the face of danger with a telegraphed grace and dignity that may be historically accurate but that lacks cinematic truth.

In one scene, a white hotel guest, trapped in sealed room with other guests, expresses concern over Arjun's Sikh headwear. He responds not by heeding his boss's advice and avoiding her, but rather by approaching her, showing her pictures of his family, and explaining that his turban and hairstyle follow his religious beliefs. It's almost preachy, and feels like homework.

Hotel Mumbai once again raises the question of whether it's even possible to portray mass violence in a humane way that leaves room for empathy. The film's choice to literally foreground its white characters while depicting countless Indian men and women as indistinct blurs in the background, murdered with their backs turned to the camera, doesn't make a convincing case for yes.

Its focus feels manufactured for American audiences, its sympathy reserved for those with recognizable features and easy-to-pronounce names. And that focus dampens the film, because the violence can't seem particularly random . In Hotel Mumbai, death is ever-present, and it is so calculatingly exacted by its terrorists — and its filmmaker — that its depiction comes close to sadism: grueling, yes, but never truly shocking.

Correction March 22, 2019

A previous version of this story incorrectly said the film would not screen in New Zealand and Australia.

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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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clock This article was published more than 5 years ago

True-life thriller ‘Hotel Mumbai’ is a hard watch. But its service-worker heroes are worth it.

In many ways, “Hotel Mumbai” feels like “The Towering Inferno” for the new millennium: an old-fashioned disaster flick, set in what one character calls a “crazy elegant” hotel — except here the conflagration is set off not by an electrical defect, but by the flames of sectarian animus and geopolitical division. It’s also, more or less, a true story, with a gripping — at times, almost too gripping — screenplay by director Anthony Maras and John Collee, who based their fictionalized telling of the events on the Emmy-nominated documentary “Surviving Mumbai.”

The new movie concerns the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, in which militants from Pakistan laid siege to several sites in India’s largest city, including the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where most of the film takes place. In the film, the attackers — members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba Islamist militia — are never identified, yet there’s no lingering mystery about their anti-India sentiments. As the film opens, a group of sullen men approach Mumbai by raft, with their leader, identified as the “Bull” and heard only by phone, urging his companions to cast their eyes toward the city’s skyline and “look at what they stole from you.” Considering the long-standing tensions between the predominantly Muslim nation of Pakistan and its neighbor, the predominantly Hindu India, it isn’t hard to do the math.

Indians will be the primary targets, along with moneyed Westerners, whose prominence the terrorists hope to use to draw attention to their cause.

For the purposes of the story, a single couple embodies this central conflict, and one of its contradictions: David (Armie Hammer) and his wife, Zahra (Nazanin Boniadi), an affluent young couple with a new baby and a nanny (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). They become, at least for a while, the story’s seeming protagonists, even when the terrorists realize that Zahra is Muslim. Her recitation of the Koran doesn’t soften their hearts — or stop them.

Not much does.

For a good long time, “Hotel Mumbai” is a ticktock of horrific violence, which began in the city’s main train station and shifted to the hotel when the Taj opened its doors to fleeing victims (and attackers who blended in with them). It’s disturbing, to put it mildly, to watch them move through the building, killing people (often graphically) like they are swatting flies, and only stopping to snack on leftover food from a restaurant bus cart. At one point, one of the men bites into a slice of pizza, only to spit it out when his comrade tells him it contains pork. Try that one over there, he is told, it’s vegetarian.

The callousness with which the terrorists operate is palpable and conveyed with a degree of verisimilitude that borders on sadism. “Hotel Mumbai” is a clockwork thriller, but man, is it hard to watch.

As it turns out, the film’s heroes are not actually David and Zahra, but rather the hotel’s staff, embodied by a stoic Sikh waiter (Dev Patel, playing a composite character) and the hotel’s selfless chef, Hemant Oberoi (Anupam Kher, playing a real person), who leads a cadre of other hospitality workers to help save their guests. “The guest is God,” Oberoi reminds a group of employees who volunteer to stay behind and do what they can while they wait for outside help. It’s a line both tailor-made for an action movie — one in which the heroes don’t wear capes but name tags and aprons — and unsettlingly classist.

That tension is, of course, one of the most problematic (and therefore interesting) things about “Hotel Mumbai,” which could just as easily have gone in another direction: one in which the characters played by big-name actors get all the glory. That doesn’t happen here. The character of a tough-talking Russian businessman, for instance, played by Jason Isaacs, is singularly unpleasant and sexist — not to mention doomed.

Deep down, the makers of “Hotel Mumbai” don’t really care what started the attack (except perhaps how irrational the underlying motivation of the terrorists is). They’re more intrigued by who stopped it — or at least who helped some of its victims get through it alive. They’re not always the people whose lives, and whose sacrifices, we think about — or even notice — when we stay in fancy hotels. But there’s a quiet radicalism in making a movie that is, at its heart, all about them.

R. At area theaters. Contains disturbing violence throughout, bloody images and coarse language. 123 minutes.

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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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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 92 1320 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 1395 days ago

Gaana User 33 1398 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 1400 days ago

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

Mr. Maar-Lega 1 1422 days ago

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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

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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?”

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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Hotel Mumbai (2018)

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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.

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Flickering Myth

Geek Culture | Movies, TV, Comic Books & Video Games

Movie Review – Hotel Mumbai (2019)

September 23, 2019 by Matt Rodgers

Hotel Mumbai , 2019.

Directed by Anthony Maras Starring Dev Patel, Jason Issacs, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Anupam Kher, Amandeep Singh, Suhail Nayyar, Kapil Kumar Netra, Tilda Cobham-Hervey

A dramatic recreation of the terror attack on the Taj Hotel in Mumbai, which chronicles the movement of the terrorists and victims on that fateful night in 2008.

Contemporary cinema has taken us beyond the point where we debate whether visceral accounts of tragedies are necessary. It has become an important medium in documenting some of the most heinous displays of human destruction of our time. Crafted sensitively and correctly handled, they act as important reminders of events too quickly forgotten, largely because they’ve sadly become commonplace on rolling news channels and discarded newspaper front pages.

Evidence of this can be found in the fact that the events depicted in Anthony Maras ‘s recreation of the Taj Hotel attack took place in 2008. A relative blink of the eye passing of time, as well as subsequent attacks, have made the Mumbai massacre another footnote in the history of terror, and this lean, often terrifying exercise in filmmaking acts as a stark reminder of events, as well as being testament to the humanity glimpsed, and too often lost amongst the horror.

The set-up is comparable to similar true-terror fare, such as the Paul Greengrass one-two of United 93 and 22 July . We get to see the perpetrators of the crimes navigating their way through the busy streets, like single-minded spectres, only occasionally communicating via radio. This is interspersed with the roll-call of characters who’re going to be caught up in the coordinated carnage, before the threads collide in a propulsive, fist-clenching fashion.

As with most ensemble pieces, some of the arcs are more successful than others, with Hotel Mumbai ‘s weakest element being its occasional descent into disaster movie cliché during certain threads. This usually occurs in the form of rousing speeches, or Die Hard action beats.

We don’t get to know too much about the characters beyond their superficial archetypes. Jason Issacs enjoys chewing the scenery as a misogynistic Russian, which is effective in a boo-hiss Lucius Malfoy kind of way, but he might as well have an arrow with the word ‘redemption’ pointing to his head. Similarly, Armie Hammer, while delivering very good all-American stoicism and leading-man charisma, feels a little too one-dimensional. They’re symptomatic of a register of characters you wouldn’t invest in if it wasn’t grounded in the horrific maelstrom they’re placed within.

That is apart from Dev Patel’s Arjun, who emerges from the crowd as Hotel Mumbai ‘s most rounded character. We’re given an idea of his home life, and his beliefs, which provide a foundation for the way in which he acts throughout the siege. He wears shoes that are too small for him, blistering up his feet, but he has no choice because he needs the work, and Patel imbues him with an effortless likeability that makes him the big-beating, and pulse-pounding heart of the movie.

Some light is thrown on the terrorists motivations at they communicate with the Jihad’s organiser, which can sometimes be ill-judged in such fare, and although it doesn’t always work here, the young actors do a brilliant job of depicting their struggles.

They’re terrifying when they do flip-the-switch to unrelenting killers, and Maras doesn’t hold back when it comes to the unflinching way in which the more brutal acts of violence are executed. It walks a fine line in terms of the explicit nature of the scenes, but is ultimately necessary when truthfully documenting such acts.

Riddled with tension and kinetic sweaty-palmed action, Hotel Mumbai is undeniably thrilling cinema, buoyed by a wholly empathic performance from the wonderful Dev Patel. It’s just a shame that more of the Hotel’s guests weren’t as interesting as him.

Flickering Myth Rating – Film ★ ★ ★ / Movie ★ ★ ★ ★

Matt Rodgers – Follow me on Twitter @mainstreammatt

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Hotel Mumbai review – queasy terrorism drama

F or its pace, energy and thriller panache, this dramatisation of the terrorist attacks that bloodied the city of Mumbai in 2008 might be admired. Still, there is something queasy about mining such fresh real-life trauma for popcorn entertainment. At times, it feels like Mission: Impossible , with its glamorous, five-star hotel setting and a ticking timebomb set piece involving a crying baby. Mostly though, it’s quite unpleasant, watching bodies torn apart by grenades and machine guns.

An ensemble piece that moves between the terrorists and the victims, in the film’s more interesting moments, it affords the terrorists (played by Amandeep Singh and Kapil Kumar Netra) small flashes of humour. Rather than cartoon villains, they are witless, brainwashed teenagers who marvel at the posh hotel’s high-end toilets. Weirdly, its straight-backed heroes (played by Dev Patel and Armie Hammer) are drawn with less nuance.

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‘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 media reviewers.

Uneasy, brutally violent mix of thriller, real-life tragedy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Many instances of people standing up to impossible

A few characters act heroically in face of incredi

Brutal, graphic, horrifying violence, much involvi

Married couple kisses. A man on the phone selects

Multiple uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "

Coke (Coca-Cola) mentioned, ordered in a restauran

Background drinking, including expensive bottles o

Positive Messages

Many instances of people standing up to impossible odds, whether it's to save one small child or roomfuls of people. Yet there's no real rhyme or reason for these acts. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, and payoff isn't really clear. Main thrust seems to be that evil exists, and it can strike indeterminately.

Positive Role Models

A few characters act heroically in face of incredible terror and violence; at least one of them, Arjun, manages to succeed. He's not the main character, and his arc is somewhat diluted by the rest of the movie, but he has many moments of selflessly attempting to help others, including facing a racist woman who's afraid of him, attempting to explain his humanity to her.

Violence & Scariness

Brutal, graphic, horrifying violence, much involving guns, shooting and perpetrated by terrorists. Blood spurts, blood and gore. Many dead bodies. Grenades and explosions. Bloody wounds, characters screaming in pain. A man jumps from a high window and breaks his leg (cracking sound). Biting. Peril and tension.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Married couple kisses. A man on the phone selects two women to be sent to his room for his later amusement/pleasure. He comments upon their looks ("big nipples," etc.). Gossip about a woman being "pregnant before the wedding." A woman undresses for a shower; nothing graphic shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Multiple uses of "f--k," "motherf----r," "s--t," "a--hole," "bitch," "hell," "oh my God."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Coke (Coca-Cola) mentioned, ordered in a restaurant.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Background drinking, including expensive bottles of alcohol.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that Hotel Mumbai is a thriller based on a real-life terrorist attack on India's Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in 2008. Violence is brutal, graphic, and horrifying: There's constant shooting and killing, blood and gore, dead bodies, screams of pain, and grenades and explosions. Language includes several uses of "f--k," "s--t," "a--hole," and more. Sex isn't really an issue, but a married couple kisses, and there's some sex-related dialogue in a couple of scenes. A bit of drinking is shown, both socially in a restaurant and to pass the time while hiding (it's mostly expensive bottles of liquor). While the film can be gripping, it's also overlong and has an uneasy feel, since it mixes "popcorn thriller" elements with a real-life atrocity. Dev Patel and Armie Hammer co-star. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

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Community Reviews

Parents say (5)
Kids say (5)

Based on 5 parent reviews

Good, but violent

Very violent, what's the story.

In HOTEL MUMBAI, it's just another day at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India in 2008. Kitchen worker Arjun ( Dev Patel ) is late for work and has forgotten his shoes, so he must squeeze into a too-small spare pair. Head chef Hemant Oberoi ( Anupam Kher ) inspects the staff and reminds them that the "guest is god." American David ( Armie Hammer ) arrives and checks in with his wife, Zahra ( Nazanin Boniadi ), their new baby, and their nanny (Tilda Cobham-Hervey). As David and Zahra dine, a group of terrorists invades the hotel and starts shooting everyone in sight. Arjun comes up with a plan to get everyone in the restaurant to the hotel's super-secret private club, while David decides to sneak back upstairs to try to rescue the baby. Meanwhile, local police do their best to stop the violence while waiting for backup. But the shocking atrocity shows no signs of ending anytime soon.

Is It Any Good?

Based on horrific real-life events, this thriller is skillfully made, but its use of creaky clichés and wrongheaded exploitation feels iffy at best and objectionable at worst. Making his feature debut, co-writer/director Anthony Maras clearly wants to pay tribute to those who risked their lives that day to help others, and Hotel Mumbai includes the expected epilogue with footage of the real-life survivors heroically returning to work and refusing to be terrorized. That aside, the rest of the movie has an uneasy feeling. While watching Hammer's character sneak around the opulent hallways, trying to avoid gunfire, it's easy to recall similar, popcorn-munching, shaky-cam thrillers and, at the same time, difficult to forget the actual tragedy that this situation is based on.

It's a troubling mix. Maras includes such devices as Patel's ill-fitting shoes (echoing Die Hard 's barefoot hero), while failing to use them for anything in particular. Mini-stories within the larger narrative -- such as an older, white, racist lady who starts to accuse anyone with brown skin of being a terrorist -- are intended to ramp up the tension but end up feeling tacked on, as if they were mini-lessons the audience must learn. Plus, by attempting to focus on a wide variety of characters, Maras winds up exploring none of them thoroughly, and each situation becomes a wince-inducing waiting game, sickly anticipating the next explosion or noisy burst of gunfire. The wait, all 123 minutes of it, is unforgivably long, and the payoff isn't worth the effort.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Hotel Mumbai 's violence . How intense is it? Is it thrilling or shocking? How is it similar to, or different from, the violence in a more traditional thriller? What's the impact of media violence on kids?

The movie is based on real events. Do you think its goal is to thrill or to inform? Does it seem respectful to the victims and survivors?

Are "based-on-a-true-story" movies more appealing than fictional ones? What do you suppose was added or changed for this movie? Why might filmmakers change the facts for a movie? Did the movie inspire you to learn more about what happened?

Is Arjun a hero or a role model ? Why or why not?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 22, 2019
On DVD or streaming : June 18, 2019
Cast : Dev Patel , Armie Hammer , Nazanin Boniadi
Director : Anthony Maras
Inclusion Information : Indian/South Asian actors, Middle Eastern/North African actors
Studio : Bleecker Street
Genre : Thriller
Run time : 123 minutes
MPAA rating : R
MPAA explanation : disturbing violence throughout, bloody images, and language
Last updated : October 14, 2022

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Hotel Mumbai movie review: A chilling film

There is no attempt to relieve the tension, no little side stories to humour its audience, and almost no strained sentimentality. however, that both serves this deeply chilling script well -- more chilling for it being real -- and takes away from it..

Hotel Mumbai movie cast: Dev Patel, Anupam Kher, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Amandeep Singh, Suhail Nayyar, Manoj Mehra, Dinesh Kumar Hotel Mumbai movie director: Anthony Maras Hotel Mumbai movie rating: 3 stars

The world has known no terror attack of its kind. It changed hotel security for ever in India, while the world gathered from it lessons on how 10 men alone could bring a metropolis down to its knees. Anthony Maras’s Hotel Mumbai understands this, letting the bullets, blood, bombs and the senseless brutality of 26/11 alone drive this story. There is no attempt to relieve the tension, no little side stories to humour its audience, and almost no strained sentimentality. However, that both serves this deeply chilling script well — more chilling for it being real — and takes away from it.

In the focus on getting things right, in the care given to details such as accents, in trying to capture multiple stories encapsulating individuals caught in that collective horror, we end up not caring for any one of them in particular.

For those of us more familiar with some of those individual stories or the larger conspiracy, the care paid to recreating the attack rather than the people caught in it might even seem a bit exploitative. There are a great many deaths at close quarters and as many inflicted at cold, dispassionate distance. The poor die unmourned, the rich have their tragedies unfold at length — a perhaps unavoidable part of the stage being one of India’s most-exclusive hotels.

Maras, and co-writer John Collee, like other Westerners before them mistaking condescending kindness for largeheartedness, portray men and women of their own worlds, better than the tiny lanes they plunge into, to tell the story of one of the film’s main protagonists. The latter is a brave Sikh waiter played by Patel, Arjun, who has a daughter, a pregnant wife, and obvious money problems, all of which is portrayed by him in a one-note large-eyed, transfixed expression. The one scene where the worlds of the served and the servants collide is painful in its awkwardness.

Hammer and Boniadi fare better as the American-Iranian/English couple, deeply in love and parents to an infant. Once the attacks begin, the family gets separated and stranded in different corners of the hotel, to heart-stopping effect for the child.

Kher is efficient as the Taj’s real-life chef Oberoi, who rises to the occasion, as many of the hotel staff actually did.

If this is a film clearly in awe of Taj, the other people it does full justice to are the four terrorists (Singh, Mehra, Nayyar, Kumar) who go about destroying it. It’s they who are the most fascinating characters of Hotel Mumbai, conversing in a credible Pakistani Punjabi (shockingly familiar), taking orders constantly from a high command (their minute-by-minute dialogue over earphones a bit of a stretch), pushing themselves as much on blind faith and promises of heaven, money and a sense of injustice, as brotherly camaraderie. In the vastness of the hotel, the film brings out a growing sense of claustrophobia well, as they circle closer to their scared prey, with the two sides watching out for every sound, every footstep, every knock, and every ding of the elevator bell.

Hotel Mumbai is also unsparing about the incompetence of the authorities who could have stopped this tragedy from achieving the scale it did — the special forces which kept a city waiting, the police that struggled for reinforcements, the TV cameras that gave away vital clues, the government that failed to stop them. This makes the bravery of those who made the last stand in that hotel as much more powerful, even as it reminds us that, 11 years down the line — as drama of another kind played out in Mumbai’s hotels through the 26/11 anniversary — we would be lucky to have a different ending.

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Movie Review: Hotel Mumbai

Undeniably gripping film depicts the brutal 2008 terrorist attack in mumbai, india. is it worth it.

Let’s go on this journey through my thought process together, shall we?

So yes, Hotel Mumbai has moments of grace. But it’s still brutal, unforgiving—and the viciousness of the violence can’t help but to feel exploitative. Is it worth watching? I guess that’s up to the individual. I’d say ultimately that those glimmers of extraordinary bravery and kindness on display made me glad I watched it. But I can’t make that call for you.

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

Netflix: Armie Hammer and Dev Patel's Hotel Mumbai became No. 9 movie worldwide

Hotel Mumbai is one of the Netflix trends that has managed to enter the Top 10 globally once again, all thanks to users from various countries who have accumulated thousands of views for the thriller .

The movie was directed by Anthony Maras and is based on the tragic events that occurred during the terrorist attacks in Bombay in 2008. It features a standout cast led by Dev Patel and Armie Hammer .

Following its successful debut on the big screen, the drama was praised for its performances, direction and respectful treatment of the events, offering an intense perspective on the human impact of terrorist acts.

Hotel Mumbai ranked Top 9 on Netflix worldwide

“ Hotel Mumbai ” focuses on the human aspects of tragedy, highlighting the courage and humanity that emerge in moments of extreme crisis. Therefore, it was expected to be one of the favorites movies of the week.

Flix Patrol reported that the film has managed to enter Netflix’s Top 10 globally , occupying the 9th position and displacing other popular productions, such as “Page Eight” starring Ralph Fiennes.

In addition to portraying a perspective on terrorist acts, it also shows how ordinary people become unexpected heroes in extraordinary situations, especially with its main characters.

Dev Patel (The Green Knight) plays Arjun, a waiter at the famous Hotel Taj Mahal Palace in Bombay, while Armie Hammer (Call Me by Your Name) plays David, an American guest staying at the hotel during the attacks.

The story follows several key characters, including hotel employees and guests like a young waiter and an American traveler, as they struggle to survive and protect each other during the prolonged siege.

The dramatic action thriller is intense and emotional, depicting the brutality and despair of the situation, but also highlighting heroic acts and extraordinary sacrifices made amidst the chaos.

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Netflix: Armie Hammer and Dev Patel's Hotel Mumbai became No. 9 movie worldwide

Screen Rant

Dev patel’s 6-year-old action movie becomes global netflix hit after monkey man’s $32m success.

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Dev Patel's 2018 action movie Hotel Mumbai is now a global Netflix hit.
The movie ranked No. 9 on Netflix's global weekly chart with 2.8 million views.
The success of both movies in 2024 could mean that Dev Patel is on the verge of becoming a major action star.

Hotel Mumbai has become a global Netflix hit. The 2018 action movie stars Dev Patel as Arjun, a kitchen worker at a hotel who vows to protect the guests when terrorists strike the city. The release, which also stars Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, and Jason Isaacs, was a precursor to Patel's 2024 action movie Monkey Man , which he directed in addition to playing the lead role. The new release became a theatrical hit, earning $32.4 million worldwide against a $10 million budget that had already been offset when it was acquired by Netflix before being dropped.

Netflix has now calculated their Global Top 10 chart for the most-watched English-language movies for the week of April 22 through April 28. Hotel Mumbai has landed at No. 9 on the chart thanks to 2.8 million views racking up a total of 5.7 million viewing hours. Despite being more than half a decade old and not being a Netflix original, the movie has charted alongside other streaming hits such as What Jennifer Did and Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon - Part Two: The Scargiver .

Is Dev Patel Our Next Big Action Star?

Patel was not previously known for action movies.

The combined success of Hotel Mumbai and Monkey Man in 2024 could be an indication that Patel is on the precipice of becoming a proper action movie star . Previously, the actor has rarely dabbled in action, largely appearing in dramas such as the 2008 Best Picture winner Slumdog Millionaire or 2016's Lion , for which he was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor. The only other action movies to his name are the genre-tinged efforts Chappie and The Last Airbender , which came out in 2015 and 2010 respectively .

Dev Patel played Prince Zuko in The Last Airbender , which was a live-action take on the classic animated show Avatar: The Last Airbender .

It does seem likely that the success of the Monkey Man theatrical release is what is driving this streaming success for Hotel Mumbai, because the earlier project was a flop, only making $21.1 million worldwide against a budget of $17.3 million. This could mean that general interest in seeing Patel lead an action movie has increased in the past few months. However, it remains to be seen if the star will capitalize on that interest, because his two officially upcoming projects are in entirely different genres.

So far, Patel is set to follow his success with a role opposite Olivia Colman in the offbeat romance Wicker and an appearance in the upcoming horror movie Rabbit Trap . Neither seems to have action elements, meaning that he still needs to land on an action project to follow Hotel Mumbai and his 2024 hit. Should he choose to go in that direction, that follow-up title could be the possible Monkey Man 2 , a movie that could launch a John Wick -style franchise and give the star an entirely new career path in major action movies.

Click here to watch Hotel Mumbai on Netflix

Source: Netflix

These Years-Old Movies Are Soaring On Netflix—From 'Smurfs' To Dev Patel's 'Hotel Mumbai'

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Four years-old movies broke into the Netflix most-watched last week as Zack Snyder’s “Rebel Moon” films and the debut of “Anyone But You”—a critically panned but popular romantic comedy—held onto their spots at the top of the chart.

Dev Patel attends the "Hotel Mumbai" New York screening at Museum of Modern Art on March 17, 2019.

"Smurfs: The Lost Village," "Lifemark" and "Hotel Mumbai" all made it onto the Netflix top 10 list for the first time in the week of April 22 despite being older films that were not recently added to the Netflix lineup.

"Smurfs: The Lost Village," the most recent film in the Smurfs movie franchise released in 2017, spent its first week ever among Netflix most-popular films in the No. 7 spot with 3.7 million views last week, a surge in popularity following Paramount’s announcement the next film in the franchise will release on Valentine's Day 2025.

"Lifemark," a 2022 drama about a young man reconnecting with his birth mother, became an unexpected Netflix hit last week despite its initial limited theatrical release and paltry box office sales of $5.1 million.

The movie was the eighth-most-watched on Netflix last week with 3.5 million views.

In the No. 9 spot was a six-year-old action film starring Dev Patel, the actor currently making headlines for his critically acclaimed thriller "Monkey Man," which was released in early April—the older movie, “Hotel Mumbai,” was viewed 2.8 million times on Netflix last week.

In the No. 10 spot was the 2019 M. Night Shyamalan film, “Glass,” which has been on the Netflix most-watched list since it first hit the streamer four weeks ago.

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The second part of Snyder's " Rebel Moon " series was in the No. 1 most-watched spot for the second week in a row with 18.8 million views, followed by the debut of romantic comedy "Anyone But You" in the No. 2 spot with 10.6 million views. The romantic comedy from Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell wasn’t a hit with critics—it has only a 55% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes —but it instantly caused a pop culture craze. The film became a word-of-mouth sensation on TikTok and was a box office sleeper hit, grossing $88.3 million domestically, blowing past its $25 million budget. "Woody Woodpecker Goes to Camp” was Netflix’s third-most-watched film with 9.2 million views, followed by "Rebel Moon — Part One" (6 million views), "What Jennifer Did" (5.2 million) and "Hack Your Health: The Secrets Of Your Gut" debuted in the No. 6 spot last week with 4.4 million views.

Surprising Fact

Patel’s “Hotel Mumbai” is based on real events. The film was inspired by a documentary that told the story of terrorist attacks across the city of Mumbai that killed 174 people in 2008. Among the locations attacked was the luxury Taj Mahal Palace Hotel , where several bombs went off and the hotel's guests and employees were trapped for three days as terrorists roamed the building. Several heroic stories were told after the incident, including one of kitchen staffers forming a human shield to help guests escape. One man, hotel general manager Karambir Singh Kang, is said to have continued working to save others after his wife and children died in a fire set by the terrorists. Patel plays an employee in "Hotel Mumbai" alongside actors Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi and Anupam Kher.

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Steve buscemi is latest celebrity to suffer random attack on nyc streets, breaking news.

Jake Lacy & Nazanin Boniadi To Topline Adoption Dramedy ‘A Mosquito In The Ear’ – First Look

By Matt Grobar

Matt Grobar

Senior Film Reporter

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Also starring Ruhi Pal, the film was shot in partnership with Lasutra Pictures, a division of YOYOGOA Communications PVT LTD helmed by Laurens Postma ( Exitz , The Interview: Night of 26/11 ) and Sunitha Ram ( The Archies , After the Wedding ), as well as 3DMC, Ratan Films, Whiskey Stream, Greenmachine Films, 5x Media, Foothill Productions, Steak & Rosè, and Wooden Trailer Productions. Producers on the project include Emily Dillard, Darren Dean ( The Florida Project , Tangerine ), Ali K. Rizvi ( Skin , Human Capital ), Frank Hall Green ( Gonzo Girl , Wildlike ) and Stephen Stanley ( What Lies Below , They Live in the Grey ). Boniadi and Lacy served as executive producers.

“A MOSQUITO IN THE EAR captures the evolving relationship between a couple and their adopted child,” Rinciari told Deadline. “In this case, the parents know little about the world of their newly adopted daughter and can’t speak her language. It leads to a question that I’ve asked myself since I moved to the U.S. as a teenager: how much do you need to understand someone to form a relationship with them?”

Added the film’s producer, Dean, “After nearly two decades of producing independent features, I can honestly say that Nico is one of the most promising emerging directors I’ve had the pleasure of collaborating with. His refreshingly earnest approach and his empathetic lens make A MOSQUITO IN THE EAR a gift for the senses that we cannot wait to share.”

Best known for her role as the human healer Bronwyn on Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power , which is heading into its second season, Boniadi’s other recent TV credits include Counterpart and Homeland . On the feature side, notable recent credits include Bombshell , Hotel Mumbai , Passengers and Ben-Hur , to name just a few.

Rinciari previously collaborated with A Mosquito in the Ear producer Dillard on Our Side , a short film that won the prize for Best Scripted Series at the College Television Awards and was a finalist for the Student Academy Awards. In addition to making a number of other shorts, he’s worked as a previs artist on such DreamWorks titles as Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken and the upcoming The Wild Robot , along with live-action tentpoles like Thor: Love and Thunder , Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny , and Fast X .

Lacy is represented by Beth Rosner Management, UTA, and Schreck Rose Dapello; Boniadi by Jordan Lee Talent, CAA, The Artists Partnership, and Glaser Weil Fink; Ferraris by AM-Book; and Dean by 5x Media.

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