Shades of "City of God", But Still Very Good

Rating: 9/10 (26 January 2009)

Jamal Malik is poor young man from the slums of Mumbai joins the TV game show "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" From that simple yet ingenious plot and setting, this most memorable film unfolds, detailing the events in this boy's miserable life which (very) coincidentally enables him to answer the trivia questions in the quiz show.
I like that the movie delved on the relationship of two brothers, Jamal and his elder brother Salim. While Salim goes the gangster/hit-man route, Jamal strove to make a more decent life for himself as a call center gofer. While there is violence in their relationship, brotherly love still comes through in repeated occasions.
In addition, there is also a love story here. A slum girl named Latika had her life intertwined with the brothers during an ethnic massacre when they were kids. Jamal and Latika naturally become fond of other, but are separated two traumatic times, but can they find each other again at the end? The story was told as flashbacks from their childhood, teenage years and their young adulthood. The child actors were most affecting in their portrayal, especially the boys. The child Jamal had that wide-eyed innocence, while the child Salim had that worldly-wise jadedness. Very effective! I do not know why the adult Jamal (Dev Patel) was acting in such a flat manner in several parts, but he is most effective in his scenes with Latika (Frieda Pinto).
Honestly, I really felt that 'Slumdog" had a big similarity with the Brazilian classic "City of God" when it came to the brutal and unforgiving depiction of the squalor and violence in the slums. The unmitigated violence in the treatment of the poor slum kids is most disturbing. The big difference of course is that "Slumdog" is more neatly tied up and positive in its final message when compared to "City".
This movie already won the Best Picture Drama in the Golden Globes. Yesterday, it won the Best Picture in the Producers Guild of America. And just this morning, it won Best Cast in the Screen Actors Guild Awards. It certainly bodes very well that this movie is the film to beat come Oscar time for Best Picture.
The treatment of Director Danny Boyle (of "Trainspotting") is very exciting and dramatic. Though story elements can be quite contrived (like that final 20M rupee question could not have been that easy, could it?), it will still hold you at the edge of your seats until the last scene.