Hotel Mumbai – Blu-ray Movie Review

This is another true story brought to life on the silver screen. It’s about a 2008 terror attack in Mumbai, India.

Synopsis

The ten terrorists who pulled off the attacks were based out of Pakistan and they carried out attacks at a dozen locations. The seige lasted several days because, inexplicably to me, there were no SWAT teams in Mumbai and the National Security Guards had to be brought in to take out the attackers. This particular movie centers on the events at the Taj Hotel in Mumbai over the course of three days. The focus is on the guests and staff and all they did in an effort to survive the senseless violence.

Specifications

Universal Studios
2018, Color, Rated R, 2 Hrs 4 mins
1080P, 2.40:1 Aspect Ratio
English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1
Starring: Dev Patel, Armie Hammer, Nazanin Boniadi, and Tilda Cobham-Hervey
Directed by: Anthony Maras

Rating

Entertainment:

Video:

Audio:

Extras:

Violence: Yes
Sex: Mild
Language: Moderate

Commentary

OK, so lately I’ve been trying to avoid movies that have gun violence as a central theme. But I still wanted to review Hotel Mumbai because the violence is real and I was hoping I could gain some insight into the mind of the terrortists. It turns out that the terrorists were more of a backdrop to the real drama that unfolded among the guests and staff at the Taj Hotel. In the end, this movie turned out to be very entertaining even considering the massive and cold-blooded violence. There is a lot of death and dying in Hotel Mumbai. In actual fact 174 deaths were reported as a result of these attacks. None of the characters in the movie are safe from death regardless of their prominence in the story. So despite that I don’t want to see a lot of violence, this movie did serve as a study of human survival and cooperation in the face of danger and I will watch it again.

Technical

The movie has a workmanlike if unspectacular video presentation. As usual, the bright scenes were sharp and colorful while the darker scenes showed a fair amount of noise. All in all, the video quality is about average for a movie shot digitally.

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I wish all new movies were Dolby Atmos but, alas, that can’t always be the case. This one is presented in DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and it was perfectly fine. I auditioned with DTS Neural:X post-processing engaged. The music was quite compelling and well represented as were all the various gunshots, explosions, etc. I enjoyed the great sense of space and envelopment and the bass seriously rocked. Well done.

Extras

This Blu-ray release of Hotel Mumbai contains a DVD copy of the film and a digital code for direct streaming. The on-disk extras include four featurettes:

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Story and Cast, Finding the True Story, Humanity Within Tragedy, and Real-Life Heroes.

Jim Clements

Jim Clements has been an audio nut since childhood where you could find him underfoot at his local high end store on most weekends. (This particular shop was within walking distance of Jim's home, much to the chagrin of the owner and his staff.) Jim's audio journey started early because he loved great music of all kinds. And he still does. Like most audiophiles, Jim was not particularly inspired by a vast majority of the audio systems he encountered. So his quest grew through his efforts to recreate a live listening experience in the home. This has proven to be a never ending quest. One major offshoot of all this is that Jim has become something of a cinema enthusiast as well. So now he's working on the video and surround sound conundrums too. Since perfect recreation of sound and video is a goal to be pursued but never attained, Jim derives his pleasure from the journey itself. He wants to help our readers on their own personal quests by reviewing products thoroughly and objectively. On a personal note, Jim is a Professional Engineer, licensed in California and Texas. He currently has his own engineering practice in San Antonio, Texas. Jim is also part owner of a small chain of craft beer growler stations in South Texas.