The flicks
HOTEL MUMBAI is a stay that leaves you with a lot of reservations; while you’ve got to fake it til you make it ... then keep on faking it in FIGHTING WITH MY FAMILY
HOTEL MUMBAI (MA15+) DIRECTORS: Anthony Maras (feature debut) STARRING: Armie Hammer, Dev Patel, Nazanin Boniadi, Tilda Cobham-Hervey, Anupam Kher, Jason Isaacs.
ACROSS three chilling days in late November 2008, the world looked on in horror as a rigorously planned series of terrorist attacks unfolded all over the Indian city of Mumbai. An Australian-made production, Hotel Mumbai zeroes in on the tragic events at the famed Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, where more than 30 staff and guests were murdered by members of the Pakistan-based Islamic sect Lashkar-eTaiba. The resulting movie is highly problematic, almost dubiously so.
The sheer brutality of these needless killings is conveyed by multiple reenactments of fatal shootings at close range.
Amidst the continuous carnage, first-time feature director Anthony Maras indulges in the base schematics of a horror movie, sweatily shuttling could-be victims from one safe space to the next while a bunch of young gunmen reload weapons and resume the hunt.
A screenplay plentiful with fictional embellishments, but bereft of tact or insight, has the macabre effect of pitting hard, haunting facts against unnecessary, manipulative thrills.
Perhaps a two-hour movie was not the ideal platform for addressing a situation as serious and significant as this.
Among those hoping to survive the extended slaughter going on all around them is a newlywed couple (Armie Hammer and Nazanin Boniadi) dining in a ground-floor restaurant when the hostilities first commence.
Their newborn baby is up on the sixth floor in the care of a young nanny (Tilda CobhamHervey) initially unaware of the carnage transpiring below.
Together with a shifty Russian (Jason Isaacs) and other foreign guests, this lot find their fraying hopes of staying alive tied to the selfless care of hotel staff.
The nominal leader of the Taj workforce and a calming presence in hellish surrounds is head chef Hemant Oberoi (a standout acting display from Anupam Kher), one of the few real-life characters depicted in the movie.
His second-in-command through the ordeal is Arjun (Dev Patel), the same waiter he almost sent home prior to the attacks for being poorly presented for his shift.
While Hotel Mumbai has its heart in the right place when commemorating the genuine heroism of the Taj staff, the movie’s head is clearly elsewhere when it comes to its treatment of the four young terrorists who perpetrated these appalling atrocities.
Giving each member of this reprehensible quartet selected moments of humour, pathos and personal conflict that never occurred - in one ridiculous scene, a gunman sings a spiritual number ahead of his next cull - are dodgy filmmaking flourishes that should have hit the cutting room floor.