Hotel Mumbai

Based on horrific real-life events, this thriller is skillfully made, but its use of creaky clichés and wrongheaded exploitation feels iffy at best and objectionable at worst. Making his feature debut, co-writer/director Anthony Maras clearly wants to pay tribute to those who risked their lives that day to help others, and Hotel Mumbai includes the expected epilogue with footage of the real-life survivors heroically returning to work and refusing to be terrorized. That aside, the rest of the movie has an uneasy feeling. While watching Hammer's character sneak around the opulent hallways, trying to avoid gunfire, it's easy to recall similar, popcorn-munching, shaky-cam thrillers and, at the same time, difficult to forget the actual tragedy that this situation is based on.

It's a troubling mix. Maras includes such devices as Patel's ill-fitting shoes (echoing Die Hard's barefoot hero), while failing to use them for anything in particular. Mini-stories within the larger narrative -- such as an older, white, racist lady who starts to accuse anyone with brown skin of being a terrorist -- are intended to ramp up the tension but end up feeling tacked on, as if they were mini-lessons the audience must learn. Plus, by attempting to focus on a wide variety of characters, Maras winds up exploring none of them thoroughly, and each situation becomes a wince-inducing waiting game, sickly anticipating the next explosion or noisy burst of gunfire. The wait, all 123 minutes of it, is unforgivably long, and the payoff isn't worth the effort.