'Slumdog Millionaire': Mumbai Jackpot
Listen Now add to playlist
Enlarge
Ishika Mohan
His
final answer: With the odds against him, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) gives
game-show host Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) a run for his money. Fox Searchlight
Slumdog Millionaire
* Directors: Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan
* Genre: Drama, Romance
* Running Time: 120 minutes
Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language.
Enlarge
Ishika Mohan
The
police inspector (Irfan Khan) refuses to believe that the "slumdog"
Jamal just "knew the answers," insisting his success on the show is
just a scam. Fox Searchlight
“'Slumdog'
could hardly be more cross-cultural — a romantic adventure set in
India, financed in Europe, made by English filmmakers, featuring Muslim
characters speaking Hindi ... with a climax hinging on the answer to a
question about a French novel.”
Watch Clips
'I'd Like To Phone A Friend'
add 'Kids On The Train'
add 'Are You Nervous?'
add
Enlarge
Ishika Mohan
Jamal Malik is constantly trying to rescue Latika (Freida Pinto), the love of
his life, from catastrophe. Fox Searchlight
All Things Considered, November 12, 2008 · The odds are always stacked against
even the smartest contestants on a
TV game show, but the odds against 18-year-old Jamal Malik — the
Mumbai-born "slumdog" of the title — are reeeeally steep.
This
is a kid with no education. He was orphaned at 7, grew up in the
endless shantytowns around India's commercial capital, and now serves
tea as a profession.
None of this has prepared him for the sort of questions they ask on the Indian
version of Who Wants To Be a Millionaire:
"In Alexander Dumas' book The Three Musketeers, two of the musketeers are
called Athos and Porthos. What was the name of the third Musketeer?"
The
likelihood that Jamal, or for that matter any friend he might
conceivably phone, will be able to answer such a question is so slim —
and he has done so well at the game — that the show calls in the police
to find out what his scam is. Between his TV appearances, they try to
beat a confession out of him. All he can tell them is, "I knew the
answers."
The camera, though, whooshes back to how he
knew them — life lessons from a childhood almost Dickensian in its
deprivation and excess. There were manipulative adults, brutal
authority figures and a brother who went as wrong as Jamal went right.
Also
wild good times and a girl named Latika, to whom Jamal has been
devoted, and whom he's been trying to rescue from various calamities
since he was 7 years old.
It would be hard to overstate how gloriously frenetic Slumdog Millionaire gets
as its story leaps from fistfights atop luxury high-rises to the
harrowing anti-Muslim riots that kill Jamal's mother to the playfully
raucous tourist scams he and his brother run at the Taj Mahal.
The film was shot not on sets like some Bollywood romance, but in the real,
teeming, boisterous Mumbai. It has a cleverly intricate screenplay by the
writer of The Full Monty and direction by Trainspotting's
Danny Boyle, who almost seems to be remaking that earlier movie, only
with lots more romance and a plot hopped up on subcontinental steroids.
Young Dev Patel, who plays Jamal, races through eye-popping,
music-fueled action sequences like some latter-day D'Artagnan, always
intent — even when he's appearing on TV — on finding and rescuing the
love of his life, who forever seems to be just out of reach.
Romantic, action-packed and always held together by an intriguing social
conscience, Slumdog Millionaire is a rapturous crowd pleaser. I realize it's
also a tad foreign to be
mainstream movie fare in America — but if there's any justice, it's
going to be a huge hit.
Ours is, after all, an age when cross-cultural impulses inflect everything from
music to presidential elections. And Slumdog could hardly be more
cross-cultural: a romantic adventure set in India,
financed in Europe, made by English filmmakers, featuring Muslim
characters speaking Hindi, with a climax hinging on the answer to a
question about a French novel. And it's a blast. (Recommended)
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96876187
