Slumdog Millionaire

Whenever a small movie builds such a thunderous word of mouth, critical praise, and award nominations as it slowly widens its release across the U.S., I become worried by the time it reaches my local theater. Too many times, I have read about movies that are praised for greatness, and wait anxiously for it to expand wide enough for me to see it, all the while the glowing reviews getting more torturous to the point that I just stop reading them. By the time I finally get to see the movie, there have been many times where it just did not live up to the hype for me, or worse yet, I found the movie to be painfully mediocre and wonder what everyone was going on about.

Fortunately, this is not the case with Slumdog Millionaire. The movie opened in theaters back in November, and has reached a deafening amount of praise from audiences and critics who have fallen in love with this small little indie film. Just recently, it was given a heap of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture. For once, it is justified. Director Danny Boyle is probably one of the most versatile directors working today, doing everything from crime stories (Trainspotting), horror (28 Days Later), and family dramas (Millions). This time, he brings us an absolutely crowd-pleasing story about a poverty-stricken young man (the "Slumdog" of the title) in India who becomes a national sensation on a game show. It's a lot deeper than that, obviously. This movie surprised me, not just with the story itself, but also how the story was told. It uses an interesting framing device as it cuts back and forth between the man on an Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and being interrogated by local officers, who are not afraid to use torture to get their answers. This immediately grabs our attention right from the start, and our interest only grows from there.

The young man is Jamal (Dev Patel), and as the film opens, he is only one question away from winning the grand prize of 20 million rupees. The show has run out of time, and he'll have to come back tomorrow. As he leaves the studio, though, he is immediately apprehended by some violent officers who have been tipped off by the show's smug host (Anil Kapoor), who suspects the young man is cheating somehow. As the head police inspector tells Jamal, doctors and lawyers have never gotten past the 6 million rupee question. How could this lowly street "Slumdog" know all the answers? The officers torture and interrogate him, but to no avail. Jamal keeps on insisting that he has done nothing wrong. As the movie cuts back and forth between the head inspector questioning Jamal, and flashbacks to the questions he was asked on the show, we come to realize how. All of the answers are tied into events of Jamal's life up to this point. As the answers are revealed, so is his story, which creates a fascinating storytelling style that is both involving and charming. Yes, we need to suspend some major disbelief that all of the answers would be tied to events in his life (and in chronological order too), but I was able to overcome this gap and enjoy the film.

Besides, the movie isn't really about the show. The flashbacks of Jamal's life make up the center of the film, and is what gives the story its heart. When Jamal was a boy, he saw his mother murdered by some violent extremists. Jamal, along with his older brother Salim (Madhur Mittal), made a living on the streets stealing and pulling scams, such as posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal to get money from American tourists. Eventually, the brothers are joined by Latika (Freida Pinto), a young girl who becomes the "third Musketeer" of their group, and who also quickly steals Jamal's heart. Fate separates the two budding lovers, and the core of the flashback story involves the two brothers following very different paths in life. Jamal spends his life searching for Latika after they are separated. He finds her again at various stages of life, but they often find themselves hailing from different walks of life when they are reunited, and are always separated again. As for his brother Salim, he chose violence and the life of a gangster working under a crime lord. The way these three central characters are brought together in different stages of life, and how their stories intersect, makes for some compelling drama.

Slumdog Millionaire is a hard movie to describe, because it doesn't really fall under a single category. It's a drama, it's a thriller, its a crime story, it's a statement on social status and class in India, and it's also a wonderfully light-hearted romance. The movie is rated R, due to some early scenes of violence and torture, but this is a crowd pleasing movie that should work on just about anyone, and is gentle enough for teens to watch without the concern of parents. The movie initially grabs our attention with its unorthodox story telling and exotic location, but then it further holds our interest with it's sweet-natured love story. Jamal is an immediately likable young hero, and the performance by Dev Patel is a sympathetic and strong one. What amazed me is how close we feel to the characters by the time it's all over. The screenplay by Simon Beaufoy (based on the novel "Q & A" by Vikas Swarup) lets the characters build and develop throughout the flashbacks, so it makes sense to see the young children we see in the early flashbacks grow into the adults we eventually see them as. Likewise, the long-distance romance between Jamal and Latika does not suffer from convoluted storytelling that forces them to be apart, and flows naturally. We like these characters, and hope for a happy ending for them.

There may be some people who are turned off by the film, because it relies on subtitles for half of its running time. Those people should not fear, as a majority of the dialogue is in English. And when it does use subtitles, it is in a much more colorful way than we are accustomed to seeing them done in films. It's one of the few times I find something hard to describe in words, you'll just have to see it for yourself. Besides, despite the exotic location, this is a universal story that anyone can relate to. This is what gives the movie its wide appeal. It's simple enough for anyone to get into, but it's deep and strong enough for just about anyone to get involved in Jamal's life, and the lives of those around him. The movie also has a wonderful and satirical sense of humor to itself, such as the scene where Jamal takes a temporary job at a call center, and tries to convince the customer on the other end that he is not a foreigner. It even ends with a grand Bollywood-style musical number during the end credits, which all but guarantees anyone who watches it will walk out of the theater in a good mood.

I've been seeing a lot of dramas lately where I didn't feel involved, or felt like I wasn't a part of the story. (Defiance and Notorious being two recent examples.) With Slumdog Millionaire, I was completely transported into the story that Boyle and his cast were trying to tell from beginning-to-end. This is a wonderful movie, one of 2008's best, and is worthy of all the attention it's been getting. I know you've been hearing the hype for a while now, but now that the movie is finally starting to get a wide release, it's time to treat yourself and finally see it.

See the movie times in your area or buy the DVD at Amazon.com!

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