Former CIA officer John Kiriakou has given a high accuracy score to Patel's best movies see him in thrilling roles, portraying captivating characters that are highly unique depending on the story he's contributing to. This includes everything from his theatrical debut in 2008's Slumdog Millionaire, to his first directorial movie as the lead character in 2024's Monkey Man. His performances are often memorable thanks to the way he commands the screen whenever he's front-and-center.

Beyond original stories for the big screen, Patel has also starred in multiple adaptations of existing works. This includes 2019's The Personal History of David Copperfield, where he played the title character, and 2021's The Green Knight, where he was the Arthurian knight Gawain. However, his talent also stretches into movies based on real events, like portraying mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan in the 2015 biopic The Man Who Knew Infinity. But there is one real-world event he brought to the big screen 11 years after the fact which remains a memorable part of his film career.

Patel's 2019 Movie Hotel Mumbai Is Accurate To Real-World Terror Attacks

CIA Expert Confirms The Film's Realism

Accoding to Kiriakou, Patel's 2019 movie Hotel Mumbai is highly accurate to the events of the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The movie sees the actor portray Arjun, a chef working at the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in India. He ends up working closely with American guest David (Armie Hammer) as they try to escape the hotel, while also getting as many people out as possible. The film holds a 76% rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, who say that, while some may find certain scenes exploitative, the movie never holds back on its depiction of the horrors that occurred.

Speaking with Insider for their series How Real Is It?, Kiriakou offered plenty of praise for Hotel Mumbai, calling it highly accurate to what was going on during the 2008 terror attacks it portrays. During his analysis, starting at 15:34, the former CIA officer gave some context about the attack, including how he was one of the few people to recognize it as a Kashmiri separatist group as it was unfolding:

Oh my God, yeah. I that like it was yesterday. What we're seeing in this clip is just one aspect of what was a very well-coordinated, long-term attack in Mumbai. More than 100 people were killed. I was working for ABC News when that took place. I was a counterterrorism consultant at ABC News, and I decided to flip through the channels to see what everybody was saying about this attack. I got to CNN - it's Al-Qaeda. Go to Fox - it's Al-Qaeda. MSNBC - it's Al-Qaeda. And I said to my wife, "Al-Qaeda has no beef with the Indians. Why would they do something like this?" So I went to ABC, and I get mic'd up, and go on, and they ask me my initial impressions, and I said, "I don't think this is Al-Qaeda. I think this is a Kashmiri separatist group. It turned out, it was a Kashmiri separatist group. We learned later, like a year later, that they had carried out these attacks with training from Al-Qaeda. The Indians, frankly, were caught flat-footed. Certainly they have experience with terrorism in Kashmir, and this is an issue - an ongoing, violent issue - between the Indians and the Pakistanis in the north of the country. But in Mumbai? They'd never experienced anything like this before.

He then praised the movie for its depiction of Patel's Arjun, saying many of hotel staff led people out of the building, likely saving hundreds of lives. Kiriakou ends the segment by giving the movie a 9 out of 10 for real-world accuracy. Check out what Kiriakou had to say in video form below as well:

Yeah the hotel staff. This is really the story here. They were absolutely heroic in their quick thinking to save probably hundreds of hotel guests. They were able to get them out of the hotel. Yeah, this movie was right on. I'd give it a 9 or a 10 [out of 10]. This was an excellent movie.

What Kiriakou's Analysis Says About Hotel Mumbai's Accuracy

The Movie Perfectly Encapsulates The Horrors Of That Day

Kiriakou's praise for Patel's historical movie shows that, despite some negativity critics have expressed about its depiction of events, the way it portrayed them was accurate to real life. This makes Hotel Mumbai an important part of Patel's film career, since his performance was crucial to how the events onscreen were depicted. With the movie accurately showcasing such an important event during Indian history, it makes it one of the more memorable movies the actor has starred in.

Patel's next movie will be Rabbit Trap, a psychological horror co-starring Rosy McEwen.

Source: Insider/YouTube