Hotel Mumbai movie review

RATING: R

LENGTH: 2 hours, 3 minutes

Movie Review Mom GRADE: B

IN A NUTSHELL: Based on the chilling true story of the 2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel by a group of Pakistani terrorists. It’s heartbreaking to see so many innocent lives taken by such a senseless act of violence.

Quite a few movies have already been made about this horrific event in India. This one doesn’t necessarily add anything new to what has been stated before, other than bring it to the attention of American movie-goers.

TIPS FOR PARENTS:

This is NOT a movie for kids. The body count and extreme violence is very high.
Subtitles in parts
Some profanity, including 1 F-bomb.
Lots of bloody, dead bodies

THEMES:

Villains and heroes
Survival
Choices
Courage

THINGS I LIKED:

Academy Award Nominee Dev Patel is outstanding. He was fantastic in both Lion and Slumdog Millionaire.
I always love watching Armie Hammer and Jason Isaacs.
Actual conversations on cell phones were transcripted and used as some of the dialogue in this film. That’s especially impressive, considering so many languages were spoken in the film: English, Hindi, Russian, Arabic, Greek, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian, and Marathi.
The movie illustrated the chaos and unpredictability of an event like this.
Some of the real television coverage from the siege was used in the movie.
The filmmakers conducted hours of interviews with survivors and witnesses of the event in order to tell the true story accurately.
Rather than yelling, fighting, or acting like a jerk, I thought it was really sweet and respectful how Arjun (Dev Patel) explained the significance of his headscarf to a guest who wanted him to remove it.
It’s hard to watch because it feels real.
At the very end of the movie, you get to read more about the event and see video clips of the survivors.

THINGS I DIDN’T LIKE:

What a travesty that the police or rescue services weren’t able to show up for soooo many hours. Let that be a lesson to YOU. Be prepared. Learn some survival tactics and emergency preparedness skills so that you can defend yourself and be prepared for any kind of disaster.
It was frustrating to watch people make stupid choices that put them more in danger.

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