For a bad time at the theater, you probably want to check out the new terrorism-fueled film Hotel Mumbai. This is the film based on the wide-spread terror attack on Mumbai in general and the Taj Hotel in particular that happened in 2008. It’s an excellent film but also a pretty dark, bleak, and horrific thing to sit through.
A co-production of seemingly a dozen production companies from India, the US, and Australia, the film has a decent sized cast with a handful of recognizable stars. The characters include the heroic staff of the hotel lead by the head chef and a waiter played by Dev Patel. Many of the hotel staff heroically stayed to help protect their guests. Those guests include Jason Isaaks as a Russian “business man” and Armie Hammer as the American husband of a rich Indian woman. These various peoples, who may or may not survive, are in the hotel when a gang of terrorists enter and start opening fire, working their way floor by floor, executing as many staff and guests as they can find.
Think of this movie as Die Hard if John McClane never showed up. That’s a pretty flippant attitude about a very horrific real life event but also pretty apt. While I suspect there was some Hollywood invention in some of the storytelling, the basic fact is that no big action star shows up to save the day. There are heroic deeds done by the victims but none of them grab an uzi and start mowing down the bad guys. In a movie that’s already horrifically violent, it adds to the tension, the sense of powerlessness, and the frustration. There are no superheros to swing into action and save the day.
That makes this movie tense and scary as hell. Truly excellent film making that I white-knuckled my way through. It’s violent and bloody and totally earns an R rating showing sick, twisted animals mowing down unarmed civilians. It really is a hard film to watch but that’s only because it’s so well made. It’s a thumbs up for film making, thumb sideways as to whether you care to sit through it.
This is easily the best of the Post 9/11 “lets show a terror attack as a piece of entertainment” flicks. That might descend into distasteful as a form of mass entertainment… but I think this film earns its violence by showing it for the brutal, blunt-force trauma this kind of attack could be like (maybe with a little Hollywood sprinkled in). I often marveled at what evil bastards these guys had to be… and then the movie tries to humanize them a little bit. This is controversial in the film’s reviews, but I appreciated it because I think we do a disservice to ourselves by “othering” the evil among us. Just my take on that one though.
This is a really good film that I very much recommend… but only if you think you want to sit through it. It’s well acted and superbly well-paced. It’s a brutal film that intentionally doesn’t shy away from what were sadistic acts. I was very surprised by this one.
Score: 88