j* Movie Reviews 2019

Hotel Mumbai (2019)

This mostly delivers the experiential, gripping ride you'd expect.

I feel a bit sorry for this film, with its release coinciding with the mosque attacks in NZ. From a film perspective a shame such a strong Australian production has been unlucky in this way. But that's exactly the kind of *unluck* that this film is about. In some ways it makes it even more timely. Because mass attacks exist, and you never know where. And a film like this challenges you to think about what you'd do amidst that chaos.

Fun (not fun) fact, ever since the 2012 Dark Knight attack in Colorado, the cinema has been on the growing list of sites, like churches, streets, mosques, concerts, trains, shopping malls, buses and schools. And some nights, when I sit down in the cinema, I check the exits and consider a couple of possible plans. Which is horribly paranoid... and yet strangely modern.

So anyway, mass attacks, they can happen anywhere. This particular film is based on the real events in Mumbai, and particularly at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel. There's an interesting juxtaposition here in the way it's presented, it feels like we timeshare nearly equally with the gunmen and the attacked. On the one angle it comes across as horrifically easy to carry out. And the other angle, purely horrific and nearly impossible to survive. The gunmen are parts militant, young, and very human. The victims and survivors cross race, religion and class.

There's a lot of shooting. A lot of shooting. The way the kills are framed up is interesting. In some you seen graphic detail - the bullets aren't quite as slappy as Kokoda, but they carry a weight not often realised in film. So sometimes a death is up-close and brutal, and sometimes they're up-close and cutaway... mere centimetres from seen. And sometimes they're purely implied with loud gunfire nearby. In this way I thought it did a really good job of putting the audience inside the chaos... you don't what what's going on, you don't know who is who and you don't know who you can trust.

It was really gripping. Mostly we follow waiter Arjun (Dev Patel) and hotel guest Zahra  on their respective attempts of survival. But other characters come and go (and die) along the way. It's not a film that subscribes to predictive narrative death, rather embraces the reality of randomness and the quirks of dumb luck that emerge from such situations. And that's how it feels at the end, not that a story was told, but that a story has unfolded.

I quite liked the subtle framing of religion in this with our more central characters, contrasting conversations about the external trappings of religion, with the internal beliefs, knowledge or behaviours. It kind of opens up the conversation about what's really important. At the end of the day humans value life, love and family.

J* gives it 4 stars

For a white-knuckle ride - this is a thriller, not an action.

PS. If you're looking for similar films, I'd say it tracks in tone with the survivalist flicks Deepwater Horizon and Only The Brave. However in those the death is more abstract and fiery, and more action oriented. In this we're dealing with something a bit more like Lone Survivor in terms of shoot-out grit, but arguably that's a hyper-Americanised story, whereas this feels told with relative Australian detachment.