WAMG First Look at ‘Slumdog Millionaire’

  

This looks like  an interesting little human drama piece from Danny Boyle, a director known jumping around between styles and genre… and a director that I typically enjoy. ‘Trainspotting’ was both fascinating and ground-breaking at the time, ’28 Days Later’ is one of the all-time best zombie flicks and ‘Sunshine’ was a brilliant sci-fi work in an era severely lacking such films. And let us not forget that little known gem early in Boyle’s career called ‘Shallow Grave’, a great dark comedy with some good Hitchcockian suspense influence.  ‘Slumdog’ on the other hand appears to be more in the tradition of ‘Millions’, a great little story about regular people. The only Boyle movie that I didn’t fully enjoy was ‘The Beach’, but I won’t get into that right now.

[SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE is the story of Jamal Malik, an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, who is about to experience the biggest day of his life. With the whole nation watching, he is just 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, police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much? Desperate to prove his innocence, Jamal tells the story of his life in the slum where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika, the girl he loved and lost. Each chapter of his story reveals the key to the answer to one of the game show’s questions.

Intrigued by Jamal’s story, the jaded Police Inspector begins to wonder what a young man with no apparent desire for riches is really doing on this 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…] — Official Synopsis