Hotel Mumbai | Little White Lies

Hotel Mum­bai

23 Sep 2019 / Released: 27 Sep 2019

Words by Adam Woodward

Directed by Anthony Maras

Starring Armie Hammer, Dev Patel, and Nazanin Boniadi

A man with a dark beard and hat peers through a golden-framed doorway, set against a warm, amber-coloured interior.
A man with a dark beard and hat peers through a golden-framed doorway, set against a warm, amber-coloured interior.
3

Anticipation.

A dramatic rendering of a real massacre. Did anyone order fun?

2

Enjoyment.

Paul Greengrass’ Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

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In Retrospect.

Yuck.

Antho­ny Maras depicts a real-life tragedy in this grim action-thriller.

This hor­ren­dous restag­ing of the Mum­bai ter­ror­ist attacks doesn’t so much as take a leaf out of the Paul Green­grass play­book as rip out every page and shred them one by one. Between 26 – 29 Novem­ber 2008, 10 mem­bers of the Islam­ic mil­i­tant group Lashkar-e-Tai­ba laid siege to the city in a series of coor­di­nat­ed bomb­ings and shoot­ings, killing at least 165 peo­ple and wound­ing some 300 more. Hotel Mum­bai specif­i­cal­ly focus­es on the assault on the Taj Mahal Palace, a five-star lux­u­ry hotel sit­u­at­ed next to the Gate­way of India.

Armie Ham­mer stars as the sort of irk­some­ly brash and over­ly chum­my Amer­i­can tourist every­one has met on hol­i­day at some point. You know the type: you get stuck behind them at hotel check-in and spend the best part of the evening devis­ing a strat­e­gy for avoid­ing them for the remain­der of the trip, only to bump into them the next morn­ing at break­fast as they shov­el the last strips of bacon from the buf­fet cart onto their plate. Hammer’s David and his British-Mus­lim heiress wife Zahra (Nazanin Bonia­di) arrive at the hotel with their infant child and their nan­ny Sal­ly (Til­da Cobham-Hervey).

Oth­er recog­nis­able guests include Jason Isaacs, whose brusque ex-Spet­snaz oper­a­tive is intro­duced indis­creet­ly book­ing a pros­ti­tute in the mid­dle of the hotel’s packed restau­rant. After he’s done neat­ly arrang­ing head­shots into yes’, no’ and maybe’ piles, he calls the escort agency to enquire as to whether his first pref­er­ence has large or small nip­ples (this is nev­er resolved).

Two people, a man and a woman, in formal attire, standing in a room with artwork on the walls.

You might be think­ing that such an overt dis­play of hot-blood­ed alpha male brava­do, com­bined with his spe­cial ops cre­den­tials, qual­i­fies Isaacs’ char­ac­ter as the film’s de fac­to hero. But no. He is ulti­mate­ly just anoth­er vic­tim, exe­cut­ed in cold blood – and in the most grue­some­ly unam­bigu­ous man­ner – despite the best efforts of self­less wait­er Arjun (Dev Patel) and head chef Hea­mant (Anu­pam Kher).

For his debut fea­ture, direc­tor Antho­ny Maras was report­ed­ly grant­ed access to hun­dreds of hours of inter­views with sur­vivors and eye­wit­ness­es, as well as unedit­ed tran­scripts of inter­cept­ed phone con­ver­sa­tions between the ter­ror­ists and their han­dlers. Dia­logue is lift­ed ver­ba­tim from these tes­ti­monies, rais­ing seri­ous ques­tions about the eth­i­cal and moral impli­ca­tions of drama­tis­ing real-life tragedy. The film also promi­nent­ly fea­tures actu­al news­reel footage, adding anoth­er lay­er of grim real­ism which sim­ply isn’t required to tell the sto­ry of the attacks.

If you want an idea of just how dis­taste­ful this film is, you need look no fur­ther than its offi­cial poster, where the out­line of the hotel has been blend­ed into the unmis­tak­able sil­hou­ette of an AK-47. Repack­ag­ing the mass slaugh­ter of inno­cent peo­ple as slick action fod­der would be egre­gious enough on its own, but the broad­er issue here is that films like Hotel Mum­bai only serve to pro­vide a plat­form for rad­i­calised indi­vid­u­als wish­ing to spread fear and hatred, and who, more than any­thing else, crave atten­tion for their venge­ful actions. That said, if you are going to mine human suf­fer­ing for cheap thrills, the least you could do is make it entertaining.

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