(Dev
Patel in the role of Arjun)
This is a taut portrayal of the multiple
terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 with the main focus on the traumatic events
experienced by staff and guests at the Taj Mahal Palace hotel. (Review by
Patrick Compton - 8/10)
Australian director Anthony Maras certainly
gives audiences a white-knuckle ride in his true-to-life recreation of the
dreadful terror attacks on Mumbai on November 26-29 nearly 11 years ago.
Many South Africans will know the
well-appointed Taj Mahal Palace hotel well, not least the Proteas cricket team
who have spent many nights there on tour over the years.
This movie, the feature film debut of
Aussie director Anthony Maras, is not just a thriller, but a faithful
recreation of the terrible events that took place over those four days; in this
sense the genre is closer to that of United
93, the 2006 docudrama directed by Paul Greengrass about one of the planes
that was hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists on September 11, 2001.
The movie also serves as a tribute to the
staff at the five-star hotel who treated their guests “as God”, according to
one of the real-life actors in the drama, chief chef Hernant Oberoi (Anupam
Kher). Dev Patel gives the most striking performance, however, underplaying
beautifully as the Sikh waiter who shows great courage and resourcefulness
during the siege by four murderous gunmen who belong to the Pakistan-based
Islamic terror group Lashkar-e-Tayyiba.
The film begins with 10 members of the
group grounding their boat at the Mumbai waterfront near the Gateway of India
monument, next door to the Taj. The gunmen went on to attack 12 sites in
Mumbai, but the film records only the attacks on the railway station and the
Café Leopold as a prelude to the main assault on the Taj.
Patel plays Arjun, a freelance waiter who
desperately needs a shift at the Taj to support his pregnant wife. Other
characters to interact with him in the terse, tightly constructed narrative are
the married couple David and Zahra (Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi) and their
baby child and nanny (Tilda Cobham-Hervey), as well as a shady Russian
businessman (played with relish by Jason Isaacs).
Although it’s an ensemble piece, director
Maras never allows the pace to flag as the gunmen haunt the corridors of the hotel,
shooting anyone they see.
One of the most pleasing aspects of the
film is that nobody’s “saved by the Americans”, a familiar element in the
makeup of the typical Hollywood disaster movie. Instead, it’s Arjun and Oberoi
who stand out as the quietly modest heroes who put their lives at the service
of their sometimes unruly and ungenerous guests.
The scenes of violence are graphic, but the
film’s real impact lies in the sometimes riveting tension, with gunmen stalking
a room where a terrified nanny is hiding with a baby.
Maras, who also co-wrote the film with John
Collee, was particularly concerned to get his facts right when making the film.
To this end he interviewed 40 of the survivors, used the trial transcripts of
one of the gunmen as well as some of their telephone calls to their ringleader,
“The Bull”.
I was also impressed with the film’s tone.
It would have been easy to turn a relatively recent tragedy into the
ingredients for a popcorn thriller. Maras ensures this doesn’t happen, focusing
on the courage of the hotel staff and guests, and the terror they must have
felt. He also doesn’t make the terrorists cardboard cut-outs, fleshing out
their characters to a degree that must have seemed unlikely.
Hotel
Mumbai is a gripping, realistic and sympathetic
recreation of India’s worst terror attack.
Hotel
Mumbai opened in Durban on March 29, 2019. - Patrick
Compton
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