Innocence a victim in gripping drama 'Slumdog'
"Slumdog Millionaire" is a dancing, incandescent shock wave of a movie, a visually explosive tale of poverty, wealth, love and crime in contemporary and slightly older India that grips and stuns you.
It's a pulse-racer, a movie that uses many of the modern devices and tricks of cinema, infuses them with a wild, rushing energy and, without sacrificing social insight or dramatic depth, blows you out of your seat.
The latest movie from Scotland's Danny Boyle is set in Bombay (or Mumbai), and it revolves around three children: two orphaned brothers, the sensitive Jamal Malik and roughneck Salim, and their gorgeous little friend Latika. We see them at three different points in time from childhood to late teens, rising up from the muck and danger of the Mumbai slums to higher levels of the criminal underworld.
"Slumdog Millionaire" is a tale of innocence despoiled, society in ferment and romance persevering, and it's framed by an exciting oddball Indian parody of the American TV quiz show "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" in which the older Jamal works his way up to the grand prize of more than 20 million rupees.
Guiding him on this mercenary quest is a suave, vain host, Prem (Anil Kapoor), who teases and goads Jamal, and ultimately seems to be jealous of his contestant's shy charisma.
Indeed, when the film opens, we see Jamal in the clutches of a cool, brutal police inspector (Irrfan Khan), who's torturing Jamal, to try to find out if he's been cheating on the show, surreptitiously getting the answers they believe a mere slumdog of a street boy couldn't possibly know.
Jamal obliges his tormentors by telling the cops his life story: how he and the rougher, more corrupt Salim struggled on the streets after their mother's death, how he met and fell in love with Latika. How, incredibly, he kept going through experiences that taught him the answers to the very TV show questions that ultimately pushed him toward fame and fabulous wealth.
As written by modern movie fairy tale specialist Simon Beaufoy ("The Full Monty") - adapting Vikas Swarup's novel, "Q & A" - it's not a very likely story.
But Boyle makes it go by so fast we barely notice. This is high-voltage filmmaking of a particularly compelling kind, and the many critics who've compared the story to Charles Dickens' London novels of rough youths have a point.
Dickens is a great novelist, one of my favorites, often dismissed as merely melodramatic. But as with his gripping classics, there is a gem of social truth embedded in "Slumdog," surrounded by delicious layer on layer of fabulous comedy, touching romance and exciting adventure.
The actors, including Kapoor, Khan and the nine young players who take the roles of Jamal, Salim and Latika, are all excellent, and Boyle, as he did in the sordid but exuberant heroin story "Trainspotting" and the delightful kid's movie "Millions," never relaxes his narrative grip or headlong drive.
<p class="factboxheadblack">"Slumdog Millionaire"</p> <p class="News">3½ stars (out of four)</p> <p class="News"><b>Starring:</b> Dev Patel, Madhur Mittal, Freida Pinto, Anil Kapoor </p> <p class="News"><b>Directed by:</b> Danny Boyle</p> <p class="News"><b>Other:</b> A Fox Searchlight Pictures release. At the Century Centre in Chicago and the Evanston CineArts 6. Rated R (language, violence) 120 minutes</p>