Review: Slumdog Millionaire

Slumdog Millionaire, directed with characteristic verve by Danny Boyle and written by Simon ‘Full Monty’ Beaufoy, is gathering huge awards season momentum, many critics suggesting, like Little Miss Sunshine ($98m) and Juno ($228m) in the past two years, this could be the little film that makes it big.

It is a fantastically crowd-pleasing film that needs to be seen in a packed cinema, but I fear it may not crossover as easily as Little Miss Sunshine and Juno did. Ultimately, it’s a light (but not lightweight) twenty-something romance that asks much of its male cast, but relatively little of the key female, played by Freida Pinto, who is called upon simply to be beautiful and be in love with Dev Patel’s hero, Jamal.

The film opens with slum-born orphan Jamal being questioned by police for suspected cheating on India’s version of Who wants to be a millionaire – and crucially if he can prove his innocence, he’s just one Q&A away from winning 20 million rupees. Using the structure of the show itself, the film reveals, question-by-question how a boy from the slums of Mumbai could possibly know all the answers by flashing back to his youth, growing up in and trying to escape from the horror of the slums with his brother Salim and the girl of his dreams Latika.

The flashbacks, while vividly shot, edited and exquisitely composed, do not pull their punches: the reality of the Mumbai slums is revealed in all its colourful, awful horror. And it’s these elements that lift Slumdog to awards season contender.

Any sense of unease the audience might feel about a ‘greed is good’ mantra being the film’s ultimate message is smashed by all the shit the hero quite literally crawls through to attain his dream and the fate of his brother. Inevitably, love wins out – at which point, there shouldn’t be a dry eye in the house.

In many ways, Slumdog is closer in spirit to City of God than Little Miss Sunshine or Juno. Its feelgood charm, counterpointed by the reality it depicts, is something Golden Globe, Bafta and Oscar voters will probably warm too as so many other contenders are just too dark for the dark times in which we live.
Score: 8