"Remember, the whole world will be watching."

Rating: 8/10 (2 March 2020)

It's probably impossible to know how much of this story is true and how much is dramatization. I do recall the Mumbai terrorist attack of 2008, and it's hard to imagine that over a decade has passed by already. Two things impressed me as regards the story - the heroism displayed primarily by the head chef of the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel (Anupam Kher) and his waiter Arjun (Dev Patel), and on the flip side, the awful chances people took to try and escape the terrorist onslaught that was besieging the hotel. Regarding the latter, I thought there were some really stupid decisions made by those who got themselves killed; in the face of uncertainty, it would have made more sense to be patient and wait things out. Although the response by authorities was excruciatingly slow and that first wave of local police was terribly inept. As a reenactment of those events from November, 2008, the film does a credible job of focusing on a singular instance of a tragedy that involved approximately a dozen locations throughout the city. What galls me about the tragedy is that the coward referenced as The Bull gave his instructions to all those faithful terrorist underlings from the safety of a location perhaps miles away. Even worse, the masterminds of the attacks were never discovered to receive their just punishment.
Addendum 6-11-20 **** I've been watching the accumulation of negative responses to this review with some interest. I thought it was a fairly straightforward review of the film, so I'd have to surmise that the reason for the thumbs down come from readers who think I was unfair to the terrorists.