Cheesy Bollywood-like Production Still Entertains!

Rating: 6/10 (27 November 2008)

Slumdog Millionaire chronicles the odyssey of Jamal Malik from the slums of Bombay to now modern Mumbai. The film's framing device is Malik's attempt to win the Hindi version of "Who wants to be a Millionaire". He ends up answering each question correctly and a day before he attempts to answer the final question for the grand prize, he's whisked away by the police on suspicion of fraud. The police want to know how a kid from the slums could possibly answer all those questions correctly. As they question him (sometimes using torture at first), the viewer is treated to a series of flashbacks which explains how he's able to successfully answer each question.
The first half of the movie (the much better part) involves Malik first as a young child (of about five) and later at about the age of 10 (played by two different child actors). Malik's older brother, Salim, is the more aggressive of the two, in contrast to the sensitive younger brother. We see how they are orphaned at an early age when their mother is killed during a riot where Hindus attack Muslims. The children must fend for themselves in the slums of Bombay and there are many memorable and shocking scenes that chronicle their tactics of survival. One indelible scene involves Malik securing an autograph from a famous Indian singer who is on a publicity tour in the area. Malik extricates himself from inside a locked latrine and appears at the autograph signing covered head to toe in human excrement. Eventually Malik and Salim are lured by a gang of criminals who end up training them to become professional beggars. The gang goes so far as to increasing their profits by blinding certain children who have sweet singing voices. The blind children are used by the criminals to manipulate unsuspecting tourists who feel sorry for the now handicapped children. Salim alerts Malik to the gang's nefarious plan and they escape along with another child, Latika who Malik falls in love with.
At the midpoint of the film, with Salim now a young teenager, he takes revenge on head of the gang who almost blinded Malik by shooting him to death. But Salim incurs Malik's enmity by raping Latika. Flash forward to the present as we find Malik working at a menial job as a gopher at a large international customer service company. Malik eventually locates Salim who is now working for the boss of Mumbai's biggest crime syndicate. And he finds out that Latika is basically an indentured servant in the boss's mansion. In the film's climax, the police release Malik who goes on to answer the final question correctly and hooks back up with Latika who escapes the crime boss's lair (with the help of Salim, who, in a final act of contrition, sacrifices himself by murdering the crime boss and in turn is killed by the boss's bodyguards).
Slumdog Millionaire has a lot going for it. It's highly entertaining and features some great performances (especially by the child actors in the first half). Dev Patel as Malik is also excellent as the low-key hero who eventually gets the girl. The passionate conflict between the two brothers adds to the verisimilitude of the story.
Slumdog is really designed to be a gritty fairy tale. But even fairy tales must have some kind of internal logic. The weakest part of the story for me was the whole idea that the producer of the 'Millionaire' show was some kind of crook who wanted to fix things so Malik would lose. And was it at all believable, that Malik, who had become a national hero, would suddenly be brought in by the police and tortured merely because they could not believe a kid from the slums could answer such the tough questions on the show? In reality, the police would never have chanced abducting Malik while the show was going on and risk losing their jobs due to possible adverse press coverage. And why would the producer of the show want Malik to lose? If he wins, the producer's ratings go much higher and he makes more money.
Slumdog also stumbles by becoming a Bollywood production in the second half. The villain in the first half, the child exploiter is much more believable and menacing than the crime syndicate boss in the second half. And Latika is wholly an underdeveloped character—she has nothing much to do except being the love object of Malik.
I'm not sure if Slumdog Millionaire deserves to be nominated for an Academy best picture. But as a solid piece of entertainment, it will keep you riveted in your seat.