Slumdog Millionaire
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DVD details
Actor: Anil Kapoor, Dev Patel, Rajendranath Zutshi, Saurabh ShuklaBrand: Fox
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed)
Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2009-03-31
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
Product features:
- TESTED
DVD Reviews of Slumdog Millionaire
DVD Review: In Mumbai, the life and love of a slumdog
Summary: 4 Stars
Mumbai, a frenetic metropolis and home to 14 or 15 million inhabitants, certainly boasts its share of glitz and glitter. It is the entertainment and commercial capital of India. It is home to Bollywood. But flip that coin over and you'll find the less glamourous side, that Mumbai also happens to be the site of some pretty deplorable living conditions. The poverty and squalor - and the quality of life attached to that - are horrific. And I guess it makes the ideal backdrop for SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE, a film of seemingly relentless bleakness but a film which ultimately champions hope, love, destiny, and the tenacity of the human spirit.
The plot is this: Improbably, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an uneducated young chai wallah (tea server) from the slums of Mumbai, is one correct answer away from winning it all on the Indian version of the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? But time runs out for that evening's episode and the flabbergasted audience must wait one more evening to see if Jamal can win the big prize. But Jamal is arrested and tortured, on the suspicion of cheating. Because how can a mere slumdog advance so far in the quiz show when even scholars before him have all failed ignominiously?
The conceit of the movie lies in that each of Jamal's responses to the game show questions ties into a significant moment in his past. As Jamal reluctantly explains to the Mumbai police, the film flashes back to his painful childhood in the Mumbai slums. In the past, we meet his older brother Salim, a bully and avaricious and who soon becomes jealous of Jamal's close friendship with the young orphaned girl Latika. We see these three endure tragic life-changing experiences, as Jamal, Salim, and Latika claw out an existence by begging, stealing, and hustling naive tourists. Down the years, the three separate and reunite several times. Yet one thing never changes. Jamal keeps faith, believing that he and Latika are destined to be together. And that is the heart of the film.
Based on Vikas Swarup's novel Q & A: A Novel, SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is graced with dazzling technical mastery. Danny Boyle directs it and makes the thing accessible for western eyes. And, yet, the film does still feature a few of the core elements so favored by Indian cinema. Most notable is the gulf between classes, with the lead character so lowborn that when he achieves something seemingly beyond his capability, his integrity is promptly doubted and he is brutalized. Also regard the sweeping, star-crossed romance, that theme of love surmounting all odds, most definitely a staple of Bollywood's. And, while SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is by no means a musical, Danny Boyle couldn't resist putting in an exuberant dance number "Jai Ho," staged during the closing credits.
The story is solid, the hook is good. The film looks visually charged. It's sharply edited, with awesome cinematography, with the cameras capturing the bustle and energy and vibrancy of Mumbai, whether the focus is on the slums or on the city's rapid phases of globalization. The pulsating soundtrack contributes to the emotional texture of the thing (although I laughed when "Aaj Ki Raat" from DON came out, since I just saw DON again very recently). The actors are marvelous, with Dev Patel strong as the central character. The film covers three stages in Jamal's life, when he was roughly 7, 13, and 18. The children who play Jamal, Salim, and Latika are terrific, particularly Ayush Mahesh Khedekar and Rubina Ali, who are very moving as Jamal and Latika at seven years of age. There is one moment which crystallizes Jamal's personality to the audience and young Ayush pulls it off perfectly, this being the outhouse scene and what Jamal goes thru to nab an autograph from his Bollywood idol Amitabh Bachchan. Really, from that point on, you're totally on this kid's side. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is essentially a flashback film, with the game show sequences used as a framing device. And, ultimately, it's the honest performances of the children which hooks you in. Fair warning, there are some very disturbing scenes played out during these kids' time on screen.
Two other actors make an impact. One is veteran Bollywood actor Anil Kapoor and his trademark mustache. He plays the smug game show host, himself born out of the slums and who doesn't want Jamal to win the game and upstage him. Meanwhile, Freida Pinto makes an auspicious debut as the present-day Latika. She doesn't really have a lot of scenes or a lot of lines, compared to Dev Patel, but she makes them count. Freida Pinto is stunning. She has a presence and flashes such an utterly winning smile that the film flashes back to it several times. With her as Latika, I get how Jamal just never wavers in his efforts to reunite with her. Although, to be fair, Jamal fell in love with Latika before she grew up to look like Freida Pinto.
What I have is the single disc version, with the following special features: the Making of the Film featurette (23 minutes long); 12 deleted scenes, all worth watching and key to filling in several gaps in the film - definitely check out "The Folder," which reveals why the Police Inspector dealt with Jamal in the way he did; two audio commentaries, one with Director Danny Byole & actor Dev Patel, the other with producer Christian Colson & screenplay writer Simon Beaufoy; and the "Slumdog Cutdown" segment, which basically is a series of scenes from the film serving as a synopsis and set to the exhilarating song "Jai Ho."
As someone who's watched Indian cinema for a few years now, I'm so happy this film came out and I hope that it'll whet the appetites of more westerners, intrigue them enough so that they dip their toe into Bollywood films or Tamil films or Telugu. But if you're not sure yet and you're looking for a more accessible intro to Indian cinema, you should probably check out frothier films like Bride and Prejudice and Other End of the Line (Widescreen). Word to the wise, the Indian film industries tend to produce films which lean towards the more colorful, exuberant, and unabashedly over-the-top and sentimental, so prep yourself if you want to indulge in the real thing. I also recommend Swades, an awesome film which attempts to make a telling statement about the state of poverty and the lack of education in India. SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE ended up winning a busload of Oscar awards, and justifiably so. In this film's depiction of the state of things with the poorer masses, I quote from a slumdog in the film as he is about to get trounced by the Indian constabulary in front of American tourists: "You wanted to see a bit of the real India - here it is!" SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE shows not all, but only a bit of the real India. Still, it's become one of those films which should linger in the brain for some bit of time.
Description of Slumdog Millionaire
DVDDanny 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
Stills from Slumdog Millionaire (Click for larger image)
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