Awesome!

Rating: 10/10 (23 January 2009)

Slumdog Millionaire opens the rotten face of India, does it? Does it show the so called "dirty underbelly" of India? Slumdog word is racist as alleged by a chap from Bihar. But really?? If I had one word to describe these comments it would have been a *beep*!!
By no means this movie is aimed at showing the chronic poverty of our nation. Many reviewers have criticized this movie for showing only the dirty reality of the country instead of displaying all those swanky buildings, glittering malls etc.
Slumdog Millionaire narrates a story of 2 siblings & a girl, who rise from the dirty slum life and move into different directions of life. The older brother ("Salim"-played by Madhur Mittal) ends up working for a gangster, the girl ("Latika"-played by Frieda Pinto) ends up as a show girl with the same gangsters and the hero of the movie the younger brother ("Jamal"-played by Dev Patel) ends up living a rather straight life as a tea server in a call center. Jamal reaches the "hot seat" of Kaun Banega Crorepati hosted by an arrogant quiz master Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor) who don't want him to win the game. He calls the police to get Jamal Malik arrested on the charges of fraud at the end of day 1 of the show. At the police station Jamal is tortured first by the sound thrashing from Constable Srinivas (Saurabh Shukla) and then he is subjected to electric shock, all to make him speak about how a tea serving slum dweller can give the correct answers.
The movie revolves around the dingy slums of Dharavi. The heaps and heaps of garbage, dogs with flees, young Jamal jumping in a pit full of *beep* (*sic*), Hindu-Muslim riots, pimps, gangsters, rough language is some of the few characteristics of the film which together with the superb cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle makes it an ultra realistic movie. Kudos to the director Danny Boyle and co-director Loveleen Tandon for the impressive direction and superb camera takes which shows the minutest of the details of the dirty slum life. The screenplay was outstanding.
Acting:If I had to rate the performance of the characters I would surely give a high five to the children artists of the movie. Almost half of the movie shows them and their acting was very natural and realistic. Dev Patel was fine too. Frieda Pinto didn't had too much of the screen time but delivered good performance. Anil Kapoor was cool. Irrfan Khan as the deadly cop together with Saurabh Shukla gave the top performances together with the child artists. Mahesh Manjrekar was looking a real gangster. He was rough, bad and whatever you may call a gangster. Madhur Mittal as the older brother Salim was quite good.
Sound/Music: Well the music has so many nominations for the Oscars what more can I write!!??!! The sound effects were superb. The background score was creepy good. "Jai Ho" track comes at the end of the movie. The song is classic but I doubt whether it would take away the Oscar. Let's hope for the best. A.R Rahman proves that he is the best in this field!
The movie has been given an "A" certificate and rightly so. It has some good amount of strong language, violence in the form of riots, torture, a child being blinded with hot syrup (something), murder and other such things happening in the slums. These violent scenes are quite chilling and tense.
Overall I would recommend this movie to every person who has a tag "Indian" attached to him/her. A detailed insight into the murky life of slum dwellers. Slumdog Millionaire is one of those movies which has a happy ending. And out of the 10 Oscar nominations it would bag at least three i.e in "cinematography", "editing" & for the song "Jai Ho". It is a perfect edge of the seat thriller wrapped in the ghostly realities of slums. Hightly recommended.