Gripping recounting of the Mumbai terror attacks and in the Taj Hotel

Rating: 9/10 (23 April 2019)

One of my vivid memories in October 2008 watching the live news coverage of the Mumbai terror attack against the world-renown Taj Hotel was of a newsman saying that the Indian authorities were fighting a terrorist inside the hotel but the problem is that they didn't know how many terrorists were inside. This movie answers the question, more than one of course.
I'm suspicious of the many, low, one-star ratings posted on imdb which leads me to suspect a clandestine campaign to undermine the movie for opaque reasons. As a moviegoer from last night, I can definitely tell everyone that HOTEL MUMBAI had me sitting on the edge of my seat. Contrary to negative reviews, I didn't encounter any tedious, slow points in the movie. Everything was well paced if it didn't pertain to the actual terrorist attack itself. When the terrorists strike Mumbai and then the Taj Hotel, the movie moves into high gear and you're on a fast-moving amusement park ride which you cannot get off. You experience almost first hand the terror of the guests and hotel staff, many of which could not avoid their violent deaths, so sudden was it. It is a tale of survival against the odds and the ability to cope with such a life-and-death situation in which impromptu leaders have to be agreed upon and quick decisions have to be made that result in either survival, even if just for the time being or instant, violent death. There is no time for the movie to go into character development and that was not its purpose, but to give a quick snapshot of the lives of ordinary people, celebrities, the wealthy, and the hotel staff just trying to earn a decent living in an overcrowded, smog-choked, polluted Indian city with a long historical past. The movie, I believe does its best to avoid clichÃ©s while being forthright about how people would behave in such a life-and-death situation. You feel sympathy for the main character, an experienced, polished Sikh waiter played by Dev Patel, a man living in the many overcrowded Mumbai slums with his wife and infant son, doing his best to eke out a living, lucky to have a good job as a high-end waiter in a five-star Mumbai hotel, thinking only of his wife and child all the time. The movie even makes you feel sympathetic for the wealthy British Iranian woman, Zahra, who is initially presented as a stereotype spoiled, rich diva, who gets her bath water temperature measured precisely at 48 degrees by hotel staff but we quickly learn is a nice diva, not a nasty one. She married out of love for a tall, blonde, blue-eyed American architect, David, obviously below her social station and her love is deep and true as will be her tragedy.
So I write, disregard the suspicious naysayers with one-star ratings and short reviews that are one sentence or less. See the movie for yourself. I go to movies for the entertainment, not to be bedazzled by some, deep-thought, existential, cosmic Hollywood wannabe that critics feel obliged to rate highly. If I walk out the theater feeling entertained, then the movie succeeded. A movie can succeed in its intent to disturb and HOTEL MUMBAI will no doubt leave you disturbed by the violence and malevolence of its portrayed, heartless terrorist killers, that were accurately described by one reviewer as, being like the android terminators of Hollywood.