This is a difficult film to talk about. Productions like
this that dramatise real-life tragedies have that aspect baked into them from
the get-go, but this has inadvertently gained another layer of unpleasantness
in light of the recent mosque massacre in Christchurch. Watching a film where
Muslims are endangered by terrorists could very easily fall into the realms of
exploitation, as most thrillers with action elements tend do to by their very
nature, and considering recent events, that’s not a sensation we
particularly need right now. Thankfully, in the hands of
director/co-writer/co-editor Anthony Maras, an Aussie on his feature-length
debut, what we get is a highly visceral but still tactful recreation of the
2008 attack on the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel.
