Good but not Danny Boyle's best

Rating: 8/10 (25 January 2009)

If the title "Slumdog Millionaire" was mentioned six months ago when discussing Oscar Nomination most people would not have heard of it. Yet Danny Boyle seems to have come from nowhere and won the hearts and minds of many movie goers with this visually stunning movie but do i think it is worthy of it's ten nominations or of winning the best picture Oscar?...........
Today is the biggest day in Jamal Malik's life.
A penniless, eighteen year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, he's one question away from winning a staggering 20 million rupees on India's "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" But when the show breaks for the night, suddenly, he is arrested on suspicion of cheating. After all, how could an uneducated street kid possibly know so much? Determined to get to the bottom of Jamal's story, the jaded Police Inspector spends the night probing Jamal's incredible past, from his riveting tales of the slums where he and his brother Salim survived by their wits to his hair-raising encounters with local gangs to his heartbreak over Latika, the unforgettable girl he loved and lost.
Each chapter of Jamal's increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the shows seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on the game show?
When the new day dawns and Jamal returns to answer the final question, the Inspector and sixty million viewers are about to find out...
I am a bid fan of Danny Boyle . He is an unassuming , humble man that makes great movies with the minimal of fuss and sometimes with very little publicity.
Slumdog Millionaire didn't need much publicity because critics loved it and word of mouth has made this film the success it has become.
I have to admit , although i really enjoyed this movie i was ever so slightly disappointed with it too.
I felt an hour in that it was dragging slightly and that the film lost it's focus and direction a little. I also felt the "Who wants to be a millionaire " presenter ,played by Anil Kapoor was way over the top. A little too bollywoodish ( i just made that word up!) for me.
Thankfully it came together in the the last half hour and i must admit i had a tear in my eye at the end. There are some great scenes in the film. One where Jamal goes to extremes to get the autograph of his favourite movie star by jumping through the hole in the outside toilet into what lay beneath and then running through a crowd of people covered from head to toe in muck to confront his hero.
The other , altogether far more sinister , when Salim watches as the gang blinds his friend just so he can double his begging income. That scene really made me wince.
Strangely enough , despite ten Oscar nominations none are for the acting and i think that is because they characters are played by several different people because of the ageing process.
Dev Patel does deserve a mention for his performance as does the beautiful Freida Pinto and i really enjoyed the scenes at the railway station in the final credits but they were not quite at the standard to get a best actor or actress Oscar nomination .
So we go back to the question " Is this worthy of winning the best picture Oscar" ?. In my eyes no. But because of past greats such as "Trainspotting" , "Shallow Grave" and "Twenty Eight Weeks Later" , Danny Boyle might just be due one .
8 out of 10