Terror at "The Taj"

Movies based on real-life disasters or tragedies, whether man-made or natural, make for riveting drama and have long provided Hollywood a great source to mine for compelling stories without coming up with any new ideas.   Indeed, actors like Mark Wahlberg have literally made a career out of it in such films as ‘Lone Survivor,’ ‘Patriots Day’ and ‘Deepwater Horizon.’  Despite a few notable hiccups recently (e.g., ‘7 Days in Entebbe,’ ‘The 15:17 to Paris’), these movies often can’t go wrong because, well, there are many people who are drawn to them like a rubber-necking motorist near the scene of a terrible car accident.
 

The latest based-on-real life tragedy movie is ‘Hotel Mumbai,’ the critically acclaimed film based on the book ‘Surviving Mumbai’ which was in turn based on the Mumbai massacre of 2008 during which 10 Islamic terrorists perpetrated one of the worst terrorist attacks in India’s history.  The movie tells this riveting tale mainly through the POV’s of a handful of victims, among whom include a young couple played by Armie Hammer and Iranian beauty Nazanin Boniadi, a hotel staff waiter (Dev Patel of ‘Lion’ fame) and a sleazy billionaire/former Spetsnaz Afghanistan vet (Jason Isaacs), but the movie also puts a face on the terrorists, not to humanize them (they are monsters after all) as much as to avoid the pitfalls of so many other movies in portraying them simply as faceless, cookie-cutter bad guys.
 

In ‘Hotel Mumbai,’ Aussie director Anthony Maras’ debut effort is a solidly crafted film that’s uncompromising and somewhat painful to watch but utterly riveting, putting you right smack in the middle of this terrorist “active shooter” incident in Mumbai’s most luxurious hotel as if you were there yourself.  While not a pleasant movie to watch by any stretch of the imagination, it is a sobering experience that I would still recommend.

Grade: B+