Hotel Mumbai is the latest movie I have seen. I want a challenge when I watch a movie so give me something I haven’t tried before. Hotel Mumbai was certainly a challenge!

If you don’t already know, this movie is based on the 2008 terrorist attack in the city of Mumbai, but more specifically focusing on the attack at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. This movie concentrates on some of the foreign guests and the staff to give you an idea of what their deal is before the shit hits the fan. We also focus a bit on the terrorists themselves to get an idea of where they’re coming from.  Whilst I appreciate this view point, you still want them to meet a horrific end.

The majority of this movie comprises of young boys gunning down innocent people in their hotel rooms and innocent people hiding from crazy gunmen. That’s it! It’s a dark, tense thriller where you’ll feel the full impact of what the people at this hotel went through. It’s kind of like Dunkirk where people don’t have time to tell their life stories because it’s always action panicky time! The movie perfectly makes you care for these characters because they’re so helpless to stop these remorseless monsters.

The movie does a good job at depicting how this attack was but there are some issues I have with it. They mention that there are attacks being carried out all over Mumbai, including at other hotels. As someone with little knowledge of this event, I was quite confused by this. A little more context would be very much appreciated. It also said at the end that there were 10 terrorists leading these attacks and it looked like 4 of them were focusing on just this one hotel when there were four other simultaneous attacks going on. More information would have helped.

The acting in this movie was very good, especially from Dev Patel and Nazanin Boniadi. The cinematography was really good too, giving a very dark grimey presence to the movie. The only drawback for me is that, because of the subject matter and how well it is presented, this is a movie I would never want to watch again. It might also be that the very recent attack in Christchurch turned me off this movie a bit. You got me Hotel Mumbai, you made me wish I watched A Dogs Way Home instead!

8/10. In my cinema some of the people around me walked out about a quarter of the way through the movie so if the subject matter disturbs you I recommend waiting until it’s on DVD or Netflix. If not go ahead, it’s a good watch. That’s it for today. I am The Blog Complainer, Signing Out.