S@llu
Adminstrator
Number of posts : 151
Age : 33
Registration date : 2008-05-09
 | | Subject: Slumdog Millionaire Wed Jan 14, 2009 1:54 am | |
| 
Slumdog Millionaire is a 2008 British drama film set and filmed in India. Based on the novel Q and A by Indian author and diplomat Vikas Swarup, it is directed by Danny Boyle and written by Simon Beaufoy. Loveleen Tandan, who began as the film's casting director, was later appointed by Boyle as the co-director (India).[1] Slumdog Millionaire follows the story of a young man from the slums of Mumbai who appears on a game show and exceeds people's expectations, raising the suspicions of the game show host and law enforcement.
After screenings at the Telluride Film Festival and the Toronto International Film Festival, Slumdog Millionaire had a limited North American release on 12 November 2008 to critical acclaim and awards success. It will be released in India on 23 January 2009.[2]
Slumdog Millionaire won five of the six awards it was nominated for at the Critics Choice Awards, and all four nominations awarded at the Golden Globes including best director, picture, screenplay and score.
Plot
Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), a former street child from Mumbai (Bombay), is being interrogated by the police. He is a contestant on Kaun Banega Crorepati, the Indian version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, and has made it to the final question, but has been accused of cheating.
The explanation of how he knew the answers leads us through the history of his short, hectic, but full life, including scenes of obtaining the autograph of famous Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan; the death of his mother during Hindu-Muslim riots in the slums; and how he and his brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) befriended an orphaned girl, Latika (Freida Pinto). Jamal refers to Salim and himself as Athos and Porthos, and Latika as the third Musketeer, whose name they do not know, not having read far enough in the book.
Living on the trash heaps, they are discovered by Maman (Ankur Vikal), a gangster who runs an orphanage and then uses the children to beg and bring in money. Salim is groomed to become a part of Maman’s operation, and is tasked to bring Jamal so he can be blinded to improve his income potential as a blind singer. Salim rebels against Maman to protect his brother, and the three children try to escape, but only Salim and Jamal are successful. Latika is re-captured by Maman's organization and raised as a culturally talented prostitute whose virginity will fetch a high price.
The brothers eke out a living, traveling on top of trains, selling goods, pretending to be tour guides at the Taj Mahal, and pickpocketing. Jamal eventually insists that they return to Mumbai since he wishes to locate Latika. When he finds her working as a dancer in a brothel, the brothers attempt to rescue her, but Maman intrudes, and in the resulting conflict Salim draws a gun and kills Maman. Salim then uses the fact that he killed Maman to obtain a job with Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar), a rival crime lord. Salim claims Latika as his own, and when Jamal protests, Salim threatens to kill him and Latika intervenes, accepting her fate with Salim.
Years later, Jamal is working as an assistant in a call centre, serving tea to the employees. When he is asked to cover for a co-worker for a couple of minutes, he searches the database for Salim and Latika. He gets in touch with Salim, who has become a high-ranking lieutenant in Javed’s organization. Salim invites Jamal to live with him and, after following Salim to Javed's house, he sees Latika living there. He talks his way in as the new dishwasher and tries to convince Latika to leave. She rebuffs his advances, but he promises to be at the train station every day at 5 p.m. One day Latika attempts to rendezvous with him, but is recaptured by Javed's men and Salim. One slashes her cheek with a knife, scarring her.
Jamal again loses contact with Latika when Javed moves to another home. In another attempt to find Latika, Jamal tries out for the game show because he knows that she will be watching. He makes it to the final question, despite the hostile attitude of the host who feeds Jamal an incorrect answer during a break. At the end of the episode's taping, Jamal has one question left to win 20 million rupees and is taken into police custody, where he is tortured as the police attempt to learn how Jamal, a simple slumdog, could know the answers to so many questions. After Jamal tells his whole story, explaining how his life experiences coincidentally enabled him to know the answer to each question, the police inspector calls his explanation "bizarrely plausible" and allows Jamal to return to the show for the final question. At Javed's safehouse, Latika watches the news coverage of Jamal's miraculous run on the show. Salim gives Latika the keys to his car and his phone and urges her to run away. When Jamal uses his Phone-A-Friend lifeline to call Salim, Latika answers his phone and they reconnect. She does not know the answer to the final question either, but believing that "it is written", Jamal guesses the correct answer (Aramis) to the question of the one Musketeer whose name they never learned, and wins the grand prize. Simultaneously, Salim is discovered to have helped Latika escape and allows himself to be killed in a bathtub full of money after shooting and killing Javed.
Later that night, Jamal and Latika meet at the train station, and finally share a kiss. The closing credits then play with a Bollywood-style musical number.
Cast
Dev Patel as Jamal Malik, the protagonist, a Muslim boy born and raised in the poverty of Mumbai.[3] Boyle considered hundreds of young male actors, although he found that Bollywood leads were generally "strong, handsome hero-types", not the personality he was looking for. Boyle's 17-year-old daughter pointed him to the British television ensemble drama Skins, of which Patel was a cast member.[4] The actor was cast in August 2007.[5]
Freida Pinto as Latika, the girl with whom Jamal is in love. Pinto was an Indian model who had not starred in a feature film before.[4] Regarding the "one of a kind" scarf she wears, "designer Suttirat Anne Larlarb" says, "I wanted to bookend the journey--to tie her childhood yellow dress to her final look."[6]
Anil Kapoor as Prem Kumar, the game show host.[7]
Irrfan Khan as The Police Inspector
Saurabh Shukla as Constable Srinivas
Mahesh Manjrekar as Javed / Raja
Ankur Vikal as Maman
Madhur Mittal as Salim, Jamal's brother.
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar as Youngest Jamal
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail as Youngest Salim
Rubiana Ali as Youngest Latika
Tanay Chheda as Middle Jamal
Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala as Middle Salim
Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar as Middle Latika
Critical reception
Slumdog Millionaire has been critically acclaimed. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun Times gave the film four stars, stating that it is, "a breathless, exciting story, heartbreaking and exhilarating."[27] Todd McCarthy of Variety, praises the script as "intricate and cleverly structured", the cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle's, and Chris Dickens' editing as "breathless" He concludes that, "as drama and as a look at a country increasingly entering the world spotlight, Slumdog Millionaire is a vital piece of work by an outsider who’s clearly connected with the place."[28] In addition, Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times describes the film as "a Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way", and the "hard-to-resist 'Slumdog Millionaire,' with director Danny Boyle adding independent film touches to a story of star-crossed romance that the original Warner brothers would have embraced, shamelessly pulling out stops that you wouldn't think anyone would have the nerve to attempt anymore."[29] Manohla Dargis of The New York Times, calls the film "a modern fairy tale," a "sensory blowout," and "one of the most upbeat stories about living in hell imaginable." She concludes that "In the end, what gives me reluctant pause about this bright, cheery, hard-to-resist movie is that its joyfulness feels more like a filmmaker’s calculation than an honest cry from the heart about the human spirit." [30] Finally, Peter Brunette of the Hollywood Reporter, while giving it a positive review, states the film is "a high-octane hybrid of Danny Boyle's patented cinematic overkill and Bollywood's ultra-energetic genre conventions that is a little less good than the hype would have it."[31]
Other critics were less enthusiastic. Smitha Radhakrishnan of UCLA's Asia Institute notes that while an "outsider's" view offers an "unexpected advantage," there were notable "slip-ups." For Radhakrishnan, "the most glaring was the language. Despite the plausible explanation that Jamal and Salim picked up English, posing as tour guides at the Taj Mahal, it is highly implausible that they would come out of that experience speaking perfect British English, as Dev Patel does in portraying the grown-up Jamal. It's highly implausible that he would speak to Latika and Salim in English as an adult too, but somehow, in the context of the movie, we buy it. Thing is that if he really was as smart and articulate as Jamal was in the film, he definitely would have been making calls at the call center, not just serving chai."[32] Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian gave the film three out of five stars, stating that "despite the extravagant drama and some demonstrations of the savagery meted out to India's street children, this is a cheerfully undemanding and unreflective film with a vision of India that, if not touristy exactly, is certainly an outsider's view; it depends for its full enjoyment on not being taken too seriously." [33]Mick LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle states that, "Slumdog Millionaire has a problem in its storytelling. The movie unfolds in a start-and-stop way that kills suspense, leans heavily on flashbacks and robs the movie of most of its velocity. The filmmakers' motives are sincere. The story is interesting enough. Yet the whole construction is tied to a gimmicky narrative strategy that keeps "Slumdog Millionaire" from really hitting its stride until the last 30 minutes. By then, it's just a little too late." [34] Anthony Lane of the New Yorker suggests that the film is predictable with a "mismatch" between the gritty reality which the film attempts to portray and the result which is "sheer fantasy, not in its glancing details but in its emotional momentum." [35]
As of 13 January 2009, Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a 94% with a 169 fresh and ten rotten reviews. The average score is 8.2/10.[36] At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the film has received an average score of 86, based on 36 reviews. | |
|
