Slumdog Millionaire

If you have ever had a lengthy movie conversation with me, chances are I will eventually begin talking about how much I hate Danny Boyle's overrated movies and his general lack of ability to tell a story. It is one of Kyle's universal movie truths. I think Shallow Grave and Trainspotting are pretty good, but overrated and then after that he made 2 bad movies (The Beach, 28 Days Later) and 1 movie so bad I am pretty sure a child made it (Sunshine). However, with the positive reviews and intriguing premise, I found myself drawn to Slumdog Millionaire, even with that burning hatred for Mr. Boyle. I can respect the guy's visual style, but I needed him to be able to successfully tell a story and not just focus on interesting visuals. This movie seemed like the perfect opportunity, plus the story is just so fascinating!

Jamal Malik(Dev Patel) is 1 question away from winning it all on an Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire, when the show ends for the night and now he has to come back the next day to try and win. There is a problem, though, Jamal is a poor kid from the streets, a Slumdog, and a slumdog cannot be this smart, so he must have cheated. He is arrested, tortured and then questioned. How did he know the answers to all off these questions? Is he a genius? Is he cheating? Or was it just written in the cards for him to win? During that night, Jamal tells all of these incredible, brutal, sad, heartwarming, tragic, funny and enlightening stories of his life and all of these stories led him to knowing each of the answers in the game. Jamal grew up without a family and he and his brother, along with a girl named Latika, run the streets, trying to stay afloat in the world. Jamal's life is ultimately depressing, but he is also endearing because he has an eternal love for Latika that keeps him going and keeps him living no matter what tragedy he lives through. Every time the pair gets broken apart, he finds his way back to her and it becomes obvious, he is not on the show to win the money. The money does not matter to him. He needs to find Latika and this show, he hopes, will bring her to him.

Danny Boyle has finally found a way to put together great visuals with great storytelling. I think this is the kind of story that could get confusing by switching from past to present and throwing in random images that do not always make sense until later and Boyle handles it perfectly. This is the kind of movie that really speaks to the human spirit and everything about just feels beautiful and magical. What makes it even more riveting is that we do not know if he will get the last question right. He does not know the answer to it and he never did, and when the question comes up, we know the money does not matter to him, so there is some tension to wondering whether or not he will win. Dev Patel does an excellent job making Jamal street savvy, hopelessly romantic and funny. He creates a complex "slumdog" who is probably smarter and more ready for life than most academics because he has lived his life. he knows how to read people and he understands how the world works because his life has shown him the ugly realities that exist.

For two hours, we are asked to believe in the power of fate, which is not always easy to do, but Danny Boyle and company made it very easy for me to believe that it was just written in the cards for Jamal to be on that show at that very moment. There was never a moment where I thought the whole thing was absurd and I never felt manipulated by the movie, the characters, or the dialog. I know it is adapted from a book, which I would now very much like to read, but the screenplay is fantastic and we always know exactly what we need to know and the reveals are done very well. I did know what the final question would be very early on, but that did not stop my enjoyment from the movie. I was fully inside of this story. I felt like I was living this story along with Jamal and I felt every brutal moment of torture, which Boyle makes even more brutal with how he shoots it and how the colors bleed on the screen. The whole experience was so vivid.

I am not quite prepared to put this in my very top of the year, but it certainly will have a spot in my top 10. Slumdog Millionaire is the kind of movie that can revive your belief in the human spirit and helps you believe in the idea that love can conquer all and that love can make one stronger. It believes in the idea that that which does not kill you makes you stronger and perhaps everything we go through will help us one day and will in fact, make us stronger. These are all things I am not sure I believe in, but for the two hours of Slumdog Millionaire, I was a full believer and when it was over, and the cast did a Bollywood dance, I wanted to join them and dance the joy this movie filled my heart with.

Final Grade: A-