The sensational rags to riches story

Rating: 8/10 (29 November 2008)

The country of 1.6 billion watches the gripping moment of Who wants to be a millionaire being hosted by Anil Kapoor as Jamal Malik reaches the penultimate question. The throbbing background music of the show resonates with Jamal's heart beat and the beatings that he suffers in the police remand room as he is taken in for interrogation on the suspicion that he might have cheated his way to come this far on the show that usually requires a well educated genius to even get half way through. Will he survive the night? Will he face the question tomorrow? Will his destiny fall upon him or will he make his own? 'Slumdog Millionaire' answers all your questions and in epic style.
This is your quintessential rags-to-riches story with Jamal (Dev Patel) playing the protagonist, raised in the filthiest slum of Bombay with a series of horrific events that led him to escape from the city after a communal civil war took away from him whatever he had. A brief encounter with an underground ring of child beggar trainers shows us the grim reality of how humans can fall to unknown levels to achieve their sadistic objectives, from which, our hero runs leaving behind another memory, another piece of the puzzle that makes up his traumatic yet eventful childhood. Jamal's childhood is influenced by his only brother in crime, Salim (Madhur Mittal) and the beautiful Lathika (Frieda Pinto) who is the angel he has adored since his early days of being abandoned in the city's rain. Each of the characters is played by different actors at various stages in the character's life and one does not realize that because of the brilliant screenplay and performances. From the filth of the slums to the ring of beggar trainers to knick picking in trains and tourist attractions in Agra to make a living and then to the underworld crime lords of Bombay; Jamal and Salim together find devious ways of living until an incident involving Lathika sends Jamal on a more righteous path by himself and he takes up an assistant (Chaiwala)'s job at one of Bombay's call centers. Fate brings him to the glamorous set of Who wants to be a Millionaire and as he answers every question, by reflecting upon his past and unfolding each event, he makes considerable progress. But his background of being a slum dweller and an uneducated 'chaiwala' at a call center puts the host in utter disbelief, thus leading to the Police interrogation.
Irrfaan Khan and Saurabh Shukla are outstanding in portraying the typical roles of Bombay's Policemen who soon realize through Jamal's narration of his life that every piece of the puzzle that fits in to make Jamal's life so far is also a clue to the answers to the questions on the show. The screenplay in this aspect is exemplary even though it may have adapted from the novel 'Q&A'. Director Danny Boyle has a good understanding of the city and its eccentricities but he may have gone a little too far in portraying how dirty it gets but he's a foreign director and that is much expected of him. Meanwhile, on a parallel level, there exists a petulant love story between Jamal and Lathika that gives us the escapist romanticism that somehow blends in beautifully with the more intense, brutal and dark side of the film's story. This underdog tale is what we need for our escapism from life and as we see the slum child emerge through the grey shades of life onto the glittery world of fate's game, we cannot help but laugh out loud when in a moment of overjoyed disbelief, he asks the host (Anil Kapoor) if he is nervous before the next question! Such is the film's connect with the audience in all its splendor of colour, darkness, horror, filth, loss, deceit, hope, aspiration and love. We have seen heroes in films but this underdog is somehow more pleasing. Just go celebrate the film and its grand showdown of Bollywood song and dance with Jamal and Lathika swinging to A.R. Rehman's upbeat tunes.

8.445 on a scale of 1-10.