The Battle for the Hotel Mumbai

Rating: Null/10 (20 June 2019)

In the bonus track of the DVD of "Hotel Mumbai," the film's director, Anthony Maras, described his film as the story of "unlikely heroes." Indeed, the focus of this intense experience was on the ordinary people who performed extraordinary acts in response to the horrific act of terrorism in Mumbai, India on November 26, 2008.
The film traces the lives of the hotel guests and, above all, the considerate staff, who courageously worked together to fend off the assault during the long standoff inside the hotel. As indicated in the DVD extras segment, the filmmakers spent six months in interviewing survivors to learn the human side of the event. The result was the depiction of real people with the goal of conveying "the resilience of the human spirit."
The DVD offered interviews with cast members who were dedicated to accurately portraying the events and, in the process, paying tribute to the those who survived and those whose lives were lost. One especially memorable character was the young Sikh man played by Dev Patel, a hotel waiter, who was relentless in trying to save the guests. The hotel chef, who ran a world-class restaurant, was another of the decent and kind heroes. Armie Hammer plays an American architect, who becomes separated from his wife and child, then rises to the occasion to try to save them. The human stories were at the core of the drama.
The film underscored the untold damage that a group of ten terrorists can inflict on innocent citizens. The cowardly young men and their demented mentor tended to blend together as a single sinister force. But within twenty-one months, the magnificent Raj Hotel in Mumbai was back on its feet, demonstrating how acts of terror will always be defeated often by human dignity and resolve.