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Slumdog Millionaire DVD

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Danny Boyle (Sunshine) directed this wildly energetic, Dickensian drama about the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country’s version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?” Jamal (played as a young man by Dev Patel) and his brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighorhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes. Driven by his love for Latika (Freida Pinto), Jamal, while a teen, later goes on a journey to rescue her from the gang’s clutches, only to lose her again to another oppressive fate as the lover of a notorious gangster.

Running parallel with this dark yet irresistible adventure, told in flashback vignettes, is the almost inexplicable sight of Jamal winning every challenge on “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” a strong showing that leads to a vicious police interrogation. As Jamal explains how he knows the answer to every question on the show as the result of harsh events in his knockabout life, the chaos of his existence gains shape, perspective and soulfulness. The film’s violence is offset by a mesmerizing exotica shot and edited with a great whoosh of vitality. Boyle successfully sells the story’s most unlikely elements with nods to literary and cinematic conventions that touch an audience’s heart more than its head. –Tom Keogh

Customer Reviews

One Of The Most Beautifully Irreverent And Startlingly Original Movies You’re Apt To See
Director Danny Boyle’s ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ is a touching, moving and completely riveting cinematic experience. I was blown away not just by its poignant story, but also by its striking contrast in cultural and societal differences from our own here in the Western Hemisphere. In addition to its compelling screenplay, it’s also beautifully photographed and captures the backdrop of the dauntingly wretched conditions in the slums of modern-day India as meticulously and realistically as any movie can and probably ever will. The musical score is quite amazing and unlike any other I’ve ever heard, which hilights several intense dramatic sequences of chasing and running.

The story opens up with Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a seemingly uneducated teenager from the slums of Mumbai who gets a much coveted, one-in-a-million chance to escape from his hopelessly indigent existence by appearing on India’s ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ gameshow where contestants have a chance to win monetary prizes by answering a variety of trivia questions. He’s had an unprecedented hot-streak on the show thus far by answering a rather difficult and seemingly esoteric series of questions and in the movie’s opening moments, Jamal is just one question shy of winning the grand prize of 20,000,000 rupees. But the show is out of time before he has the opportunity and must reconvene the following night. Following the episode’s airing, Jamal is arrested and detained after the police and the show’s host (Anil Kapoor) suspect him of cheating. While in poilce custody, Jamal recounts through a series of vivid flashbacks to his childhood that brilliantly reveal how he knows the answers to all of the questions he has answered correctly.

We learn that as children growing up in the squalid, nightmarish poverty of Mumbai’s slums, Jamal and his older brother, Salim, were orphaned at a young age when their mother was killed in an attack from an angry Hindu mob on their shantytown. Together with their female companion, Latika (whom Jamal loves even as a child), the three band together as a scrappy, self-styled version of ‘The Three Musketeers’, their favorite literary work from school. They stick together and endure a wretched existence on the muddy streets that is at times despondent and depressing. But this is where the movie’s message of hopefulness comes in as the three are a plucky group who display courageous fortitude and spirited resourcefulness despite their trying circumstances. Jamal and Salim become separated from Latika after escaping from a nefarious child exploiter where the two subsequently take to riding the many railroad trains crisscrossing India. The trains become a source of livelihood for the two brothers as they manage to eek out a scant subsistence on the trains by peddling to, hustling and in some cases outright stealing from the trains’ passengers. There’s even a rather funny passage in this part of the movie where Jamal and Salim end up at the Taj Mahal where they hustle tourists as faux tour guides and even steal their shoes to sell on the streets! The two brothers continue this for several years until they eventually end up in the booming metroplois of Bombay. Here, after becoming employed as a tea server at a mega communications call center, Jamal then gets the opportunity at appearing on the gameshow, something every teenager and young adult in his society longs for. It’s at this moment the story segues back into the point we originally see in the movie’s beginning. After being grilled and harshly interrogated by the police, Jamal is set free and allowed to continue on his final night of the gameshow after he becomes a national celebrity and hero to the public who demand to see him get his chance to win the grand prize. But having not seen his long-lost love Latika (Freida Pinto) in years, his shot at winning the jackpot is more about reuniting with her than it is about wealth.

Slumdog Millionaire is a love story at its core, but there are no sweeping romantic locations and visuals. Jamal, Salim and Latika grow up in a level of squalid, forlorn poverty that makes even the most impoverished American ghettos look like a vision of paradise by comparison. Still, it’s surprising how much their culture has been influenced (or polluted) by the West. Interestingly enough, the poor of India are seeming to be as obsessed with gameshows and tv as we are, possibly because it’s their sole lifeline to a better existence so few in their society get to experience. A wonderful movie that inspires and teaches us that true knowledge and wisdom comes not from age or education, but from the sum total of our life experiences. A beautifully irreverent and moving cinematic experience with one of the most amazingly original endings and credit sequences I’ve ever seen in a movie. Always interesting and at times fascinating. Quote me on that.

This original film will evoke a schizophrenic mix of emotions like few others
This is a beautiful film. It uses the program ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire’ as a metaphor to tell the life of an Indian boy born into the shantytowns of Mumbai.

The film does a good job in portraying the poverty of these places, although some who know of this poverty may say it does not go far enough. However, even in this poverty the film provides a moment of emotional power where you are horrified, shocked but also hilariously amused when the boy meets his Bollywood actor idol.

There are also disturbing scenes where the boy, his brother and their friend are duped by a ‘professional begging outfit’. If you ever see street children/adults in the Indian subcontinent again, you will never look on them in the same light.

The film also provides a wider critique of how these people are looked upon by the richer/more powerful classes. It also provides a powerful critique of ‘modern India’ which the trio inevitably get swept up in. Modern India seems to be more about superficial appearances rather than true development.

The film looks at India’s class prejudices, communal violence, poverty and alleged modernisation. Some Indians, who are very patriotic, despise this film because of it. This is a shame because the film could be used as a springboard for the discussion of these issues. The film is not patronising to India, nor does it preach and it certainly does not practise escapism.

For me, the childhood actors really were the stars of the film. They did a fantastic job of maintaining their childhood exuberance despite all that was going on around them.

Ultimately, the film has a happy ending, but you may feel this happiness is tainted by what has gone on prior to that point.