Intense suspense. Fear for those under siege unfolding at India’s Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in 2008 keeps your rapt attention. Anthony Maras, directing his first feature, commands compellingly human performances that make you care about the people who came to the luxury hotel without knowing what they were getting into.
Based on true events, it’s absolutely frightening how Maras sets up knowing the people involved and the circumstances leading up to the attack. He then follows the terrorists and their victims as they play cat and mouse running and hiding in rooms, restaurants, and secret passageways throughout the gigantic elegant hotel. You’ll tense up and maybe even hold your breath like the actors, trying to keep silent to keep from being found and shot. Warning: the body count is high.
Maras and John Collee (Happy Feet movies) wrote the script. They are thorough in developing the characters and their reasons for being there so that you will have a stake in how and why they should survive. The film is edited so well. It follows the action and movement of different people around the hotel over the course of the four day siege, but the action flows clearly and there is not one lagging or wasted scene.
The writing is solid and even though Maras is following several different sets of characters and plot lines, he manages to make it work well. Even when split second timing of moves around the hotel saves victims from meeting up with the terrorists, it doesn’t seem unlikely or forced.
Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire) is understated, understanding and compassionate as waiter, Arjun. His wife is pregnant with their second child and needs this job. When he accidentally comes to work without the proper shoes to work at the Taj, the Head Chef, Hemant Oberoi (Anumpan Kher) starts to send him home. Arjun begs to stay. Thank goodness Chef Oberoi lent his own shoes to Arjun so he could work. They become the incredibly resourceful heroes of this story.
The four young gunmen are indoctrinated boys who have just been trained and are being given orders through ear buds from their evil leader miles away. They have been brainwashed to think this is a religious mission that will give them pride and peace for a job well done when they die. Maras tries to make them human in a scene where they take food and one teases the other that he’s just eaten pork against their religion. He spits it out and then learns that it was all vegetable. It was a joke. But then he turns around and shoots a woman just because she’s there. Shooting people in cold blood is like playing a video game where they can make points for how many they kill.
David and Zahra (Army Hammer – Call Me By Your Name, and Nazanin Bodiani – Homeland) play a loving couple who are there to celebrate their anniversary. They leave their newborn baby with their nanny, (Tilda Cobham-Hervey) while they go to dine in the hotel’s elegant restaurant. There, they meet up with cocky, crusty Russian Visily, Jason Isaacs (The Death of Stalin, Justice League: Gods and Monsters). You will hate him but wait.
When David and Zahra get separated, they become frantic. Neither can find the Nanny with the baby. She is left holding the baby for hours as she jumps in and out of rooms trying to keep the baby quiet and avoid getting shot by the terrorists.
Maras handles the scenes in the Chamber Club well, the safest room in the middle of the hotel, where the group is getting increasingly anxious. The scene where an older white woman questions Arjun for wearing a turban, thinking he could be “one of them” is a moment that the writers and Patel handle well. His short but sincere explanation pointing out the difference between loyalty to religion and terrorism is well versed and not overplayed. She finds out soon enough what Arjun is made of.
Maras also includes shots of crowds outside the hotel of people trying to get news about their relatives in the hotel. He also uses archive footage of actual television reports recorded from the actual attack in 2008.
This is a thriller based on the events showing cold blooded killing of innocent. It’s all very disturbing and will lead you to wonder “Can it happen here?” Of course it can and it has. But it also shows the courage of a few committed to the safety of others to help them survive. It will renew your faith.
It is sad to see what happened to the grand hotel, but stay for the end to find out how it was reopened and restored to its former grandeur and what happened to those directly involved.
It will keep you on the edge of your seat for 2 solid hours to find out how they survived. This film is hard to watch, but Maras has built a film that will keep you riveted to the screen from beginning to end.
Bleecker Street 123 minutes R
