Danny Boyle's assured adaptation of Vikas Swarup's Q & A is his best since Trainspotting. Dev Patel of Skins fame plays Jamal, a boy from the slums who wins the top prize of 20 million rupees on the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. The smarmy host, believing Jamal to have cheated, turns him over to the police, where he is tortured extensively before being given an opportunity to explain how he knows for the questions he was asked.
It's a solid concept from which to hang a movie, as we witness Jamal's difficult childhood living in the slums of Mumbai, his fractious relationship with brother Salim and love for his friend Latika. The choreography, editing and sound design are peerless, fully deserving of the various technical awards the film has won. It's a colourful, vibrant vision of India and one that doesn't shy away from the harsher realities of poverty, be it police brutality, prostitution or gang warfare. Broadly, Slumdog Millionaire could be said to be about the part that chance has to play in life, and how chance can sometimes present itself as something more profound. Whether you buy into this will depend upon how much you can stomach the finale's lurch into absurdly optimism as Jamal and Latika are reunited and the cast partake in an out-of-the-blue Bollywood-style dance number.
Thankfully, due to Simon Beaufoy's smart screenplay and some great performances from Boyle's young cast (Jamal, Salim and Latika are all played by three separate actors through their childhood and adolescense), the optimism on display in the film's final third feels grounded in the rest of the movie through Jamal's make-the-best-of-it attitude. Moving, lively cinema.
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