Great but another movie that makes India look really, really bad

Rating: 9/10 (10 June 2019)

Watched this movie this weekend and frankly, it was more of an indictment of Indian society than anything else. Just like Michael Mann has movies set in the same location that seem like they are part of the same universe, Hotel Mumbai seems to be set in the same sort of universe as Slumdog Millionaire, which Dev Patel also was in. The audience sees the crushing poverty India's working class lives in, how they are treated by their superiors who are kind of still living in the past going above and beyond obsessing over their staff's appearance and treating every guest, and they said it, like a God.
One thing that made my head turn, even do research, was the fact that Mumbai didn't have a SWAT team and needed to procure one from New Delhi hours away. How incompetent does your government have to be to not have a team like that in Mumbai of all places? One of the world's largest cities! Did crime not exist until 2008 there or something? I have to imagine that at some point they had a crisis that warranted trained SWAT officers with modern equipment. No one ever watched a movie and thought "Hey, wouldn't it be cool to have guys like this on the local police force?"
I do have some criticism of the leads. For starters, Hollywood needs to stop hiring Dev Patel whenever they need an Indian actor. He was born in England and just exudes that London schoolboy snobbery in every role he's in. He can't act! I can never sympathize with him. The other Westerners in the movie were also insufferable, especially Nazanin Boniadi. Armie Hammer feels absolutely wasted in a bit role in this film. He seems to make a nasty habit of taking stupid, pointless roles that don't help his career and it's baffling.
Pretty sure they won't be showing this movie on flights to India. Well done film, better casting would have put it over the top.