Running out of lifelines

Slumdog Millionaire
Review by Nathan Weinbender

Danny Boyle’s “Slumdog Millionaire” is virtuoso filmmaking. It is a wonderful romance of old-fashioned Hollywood storytelling and Bollywood sensibilities, and it is a superb movie, even though you’ve no doubt seen the story—a resourceful orphan defeats the odds, makes it big in the world and falls in love with a beautiful woman—worked over before in countless other movies.

But this one seems different. When the hero’s girl gets stuck in traffic, for instance, I just knew that, based on a time-honored tradition, that she would get out of the car and go running down the street so she can see her boyfriend on television and just make it in time to see his Big Moment. Clichéd, yes, but I bought it hook, line and sinker. I think you will, too.

“Slumdog Millionaire” overcomes the familiarity of its story in a few ways: 1) Its ingenious framing device, which involves our hero on the Hindi version of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?,” 2) a terrific lead performance by an 18-year-old actor named Dev Patel, which grounds the film in reality, and 3) Boyle’s direction, which is spirited and fresh, and Simon Beaufroy’s script, which is full of life.

Patel plays Jamal, who, as the movie begins, has made it to the final question (worth 20 million rupees) on the “Millionaire” show. In between commercial breaks, he’s apprehended by the police on suspicion of cheating—how could a poor kid from the slums be such a wealth of knowledge?

How, for example, does he know who is on the American $100 bill? He doesn’t even know that Gandhi’s face is on the 1000 rupee note. And how does he know about cricket and Alexandre Dumas and British rowing teams and Bollywood movie stars and Samuel Colt?

After some cruel and coercive interrogation methods, the police inspector (Irfan Khan) relents and questions Jamal about his life in the slums of Mumbai, and the movie works backward so that we see Jamal growing up and how specific events from his past gave him the answers for certain questions on the show.

When Jamal is a boy (played by Ayush Mahesh Khedekar), his mother is killed in an anti-Muslim raid, and he and his brother Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail) are left to fend for themselves. They’re apprehended by a devious gangster who uses orphans in an operation to gather money through panhandling; eventually they escape, but they have to leave behind their friend Latika, who becomes for Jamal what the green light at the end of the pier was for Gatsby.

The brothers get by scamming tourists—they impersonate tour guides, supplying false information (did you know that the Taj Mahal was originally intended to be a big hotel?) and stealing the shoes off the feet of hapless Americans, which they later sell. Salim becomes involved in nefarious criminal activities, and when he and Jamal do eventually run into Latika, whose virginity is being sold to the highest bidder, his reaction is not expected.

And now we’re in present day, as Jamal, working in a call center, continues to search for Latika (played as an adult by the beautiful Freida Pinto) and now for Salim, as Salim has more or less kidnapped her. And what are the odds that Latika will see Jamal on television, realize he’s the right one for her and rush off to find him?

This is an exhilarating plot—reading the synopsis makes you want to see the movie, doesn’t it?—and if it sounds overly complicated, I can assure you that it most certainly is not. “Slumdog Millionaire” is the product of imaginative yet efficient storytelling—it winds its way through past and present, it heaps on subplots, it follows characters over the course of two decades. And yet it never feels padded or showy, not a sequence is out of place, and although the elements of the story may feel familiar, the structure keeps us on our toes.

At the center of all this is Dev Patel, an honest, natural performer making his film debut. He is perfectly cast as both a street-smart whiz kid and as a soft-spoken romantic who seems overwhelmed by his own intelligence. He’s convincing, too, in his battle of wits with the interrogator and with Anil Kapoor, who plays the two-faced “Millionaire” host who may be throwing the game.

Danny Boyle is a great filmmaker, and his movies have run the gamut from horror (“28 Days Later”) to black comedy (“Trainspotting”) to family films (“Millions”). But this is the best and most exciting picture he’s made, and it takes a great director to approach foreign material with such a sure hand. “Slumdog Millionaire” is an invigorating film, and the more I think about it, the more I love it.

Grade: A+

Note: The film is rated R, most likely due to some violent material involving children. Do not let it scare you or your family away; it is nothing that older kids and teenagers can’t handle.

Directed by Danny Boyle. Written by Simon Beaufroy. Based on the novel “Q&A” by Vikas Swarup. Starring Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Tanay Hemant Chheda, Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala, Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar, Anil Kapoor and Irfan Khan. R; 120m.