I have a hunch that Slumdog Millionaire is going to be the best movie I see all year. While a slew of Oscar contenders are still set to release in December — such as Brad Pitt’s The Mysterious Case of Benjamin Button or Meryl Streep’s Doubt — I’m pretty confident that this gripping film will take the cake for ’08.
Directed by Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), the film centers around Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a teenager from Mumbai, India, who winds up on the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and gets all the way to the final question ... before time runs out. I’m not giving anything away — in fact, the game show is a mere backdrop for the film’s gripping plot to unfold upon.
The film opens with Malik in a back room of an Indian police station getting waterboarded and electrocuted in an attempt to reveal how he “cheated” his way to the right answers. After all, Indian professors and businessmen have appeared on the show and couldn’t advance past the 60,000 rupee question — it’s not a surprise the police smelled foul play. But how did this piece of street trash manage to conquer the odds and land himself in the hot seat with a million bucks on the line?
We learn how through a series of flashbacks. Once the police inspector (Irrfan Khan) decides that perhaps Jamal actually knew the answers, he ends the torture and proceeds to go through the tape of the show, asking question by question about how Jamal came up with the correct response. With each question, we get to know a little more about the slumdog’s life story.
We see a young 7-year-old Jamal, along with his brash but loyal older brother Salim, get smacked on the head by their teacher with a copy of The Three Musketeers after arriving late to grade school. We see him crawl through sewage to get a coveted autograph from a famous Bollywood movie star. We see how he goes from being a cherished son to an orphan in a matter of seconds after a violent attack against Muslims in his neighborhood leaves his mother dead. It’s all compelling, riveting stuff, and it’s all related to the questions he gets asked on the game show. It makes for a unique narrative that constantly leaves you, the audience member, waiting in suspense.
The same night as their mother’s death Jamal and Salim befriend another orphan, Latika — whom Jamal encouragingly named “The Third Musketeer” and who also becomes his best friend. The trio manages to fend for itself in the ghettos of Mumbai before getting picked up by an orphanage director, Mr. Nanda. Things at the orphanage are grand at first, but Nanda goes from being a Good Samaritan to a greedy bad apple — prompting the young threesome to make a daring escape from his clutches. But in the last seconds of their flee, Latika gets left behind.
This separation is what produces Jamal’s epic search for answers. As we watch him grow up, he never once stops looking for the girl of his dreams. Every step Jamal takes is only so he can find Latika (the older version is played by the achingly stunning Freida Pinto). They do reconnect twice, but all too briefly. They’re separated again almost as fast as they first met. We learn that the only reason Jamal is on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is so Latika will run away with him, so he can win the money and so the couple can live the life they always dreamed of. In the end, when Jamal (by now a national sensation) returns to the show to answer the million dollar question — aptly: give the name of the third Musketeer — it doesn’t even matter whether he wins the money. It matters whether he conquers his own destiny.
Slumdog Millionaire is a fierce tale of brotherhood, friendship, fate, loyalty and the hardships that are overcome in search of true love. It’s all at once heart-wrenching and uplifting, grim with a hint of comedy. It’s also a lesson in how privileged we are as Americans — the majority of us really don’t know violence or poverty. Thanks to good reviews like this one, the movie has shot up out of obscurity into the limelight and may now even get some love from the Academy. While Boyle, Patel and Pinto were fantastic, I think the statue the movie really deserves is Best Picture. Slumdog Millionaire is in limited release, but if you can find it anywhere, don’t miss out on one of the best films in years.
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