"Slumdog Millionaire"

Rating: 8/10 (8 December 2011)

The film "Slumdog Millionaire" is a very dramatized film in which has a lot of twist and turns. The main actor, Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), is a boy who grew up in the slums of India with his brother Salim Malik (Madhur Mittal). They were able to withstand being run from their home, losing their mother at an early age, and also the brutal wickedness and ways that people tend to treat kids suffering from impoverishment. The story starts out with Jamal being a guest on India's version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire". He goes through a series of flashbacks that occurred throughout his life, explaining to the creator of the show how he was able to answer all of the questions correctly. The storyline of the film is really complex as it twists and turns and somehow still manages to focus on the theme of the film, finding true love and doing whatever is possible to obtain it. Latika (Freida Pinto), is a childhood girl that Jamal and Salim grew up with. Jamal is heavily attracted to Latika and stops at nothing to win her love. The camera angles in the film are really breathtaking as the images that are shot throughout the film gives you the feeling of really experiencing their life and cultural ways. In one scene, it shows Jamal and Salim overlooking the same community they were brought up in before being ran away. It shows a beautiful high shot picture of the two overlooking the whole city from above. I believe this is relevant to the theme because it helped Jamal to realize how much he missed Latika, and also for contributing to go upon the game show to see if it helps her to find his whereabouts. The lighting in the scenes definitely made the feeling more intense as in certain scenes of action the lighting got more dimmer and other scenes tend to brighten up as the scene slows down. The romance between Jamal and Latika wasn't shown very often, in which reminds me of "Love And Basketball", but you eventually could figure out the ending with Jamal and Latika together at last. I had a good overall feeling for the movie, and it was surprisingly good in my opinion. I do believe however, that it took quite a while to get started.