Slumdog Millionaire Review
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Slumdog Millionaire
Fox Searchlight’Warners
R 120 min
I’ll get around to an Oscar story soon enough but so far the buzz concerns bewildering snubs and nominations for best picture.
One of the nominees that fall into the latter group is SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE directed from Danny Boyle best known for the quirky 1996 drug film, TRAINSPOTTING.
Based on an award winning Indian novel, this film version became something of an Indo-British endeavor and soon captured the attention of worldwide critics. Now the academy, in a period in which it’s hip to affect an international image has added it to the list of Best Picture nominees.
I won’t go so far as to call it “undeserving” but I will admit I was at first surprised in light of other more, shall we say, more audience friendly films.
SLUMDOG is a story of two brothers from the slums of Mumbai (the former Bombay) and the events that shape their lives as they journey through the incredible danger and squalor of the region.
Salim and Jamal are soon kidnapped by a gangster who uses children to act as beggars thieves and prostitutes, kind of an “Oliver Twist” reset in horrific poverty.
They will escape and stay alive through luck, crime and wits.
Jamal’s life intent is to reunite with a young girl Latika who was lost during the escape from gangsters.
The odd hook here is the entire story is interwoven through flashback into Jamal’s winning appearance on India’s version of “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?”
Apparently unlike the US version, winning players are tortured as suspected cheats. That’s just another reason to feel lucky not to have been born over there.
As he recounts his answers under duress we see that each one relates to an episode in the children’s dangerous and violent lives.
SLUMDOG is so violent, disturbing and grating for the first half that people were actually walking out of the theater at the showing I attended.
It took me a long time to get past that but eventually you will see the pattern and soon after that SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is as engrossing as any I’ve seen.
It really is one of the most unique and eventually captivating films in memory and certainly worthy of the nomination, (not that others left off that list were not.)
I’ll report on that in lore detail later.
B+
WSS
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I wonder if my friend from India has seen this movie. I'll have to ask him. His family was middle class well to do in
India...
their stone home was surrounded by a stone fence - with broken glass and nails cemented into the top to prevent crime...
he said once, he used his cricket bat to hit a burglar on the arm when the burglar reached into his bedroom to
try to grab anything he could take and sell...
the poverty is hideous and overwhelming, but they are -rapidly- growing into an overall more afluent society.
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