Dvd
Slumdog Millionaire
The big winner at the 2009 Academy Awards (eight Oscars in total, including Best Film, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay) is Danny Boyle's (Trainspotting, Sunshine) Slumdog Millionaire.
Jamal Malik (Patel), born into dire poverty, is an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai. The nation is watching as Jamal climbs that little ladder of cash on India's 'Who Wants To Be A Millionare?' And climb he does, eventually one question away from winning the jackpot: 20 million rupees. But then the show breaks for the night, and police arrest him on suspicion of cheating; how could a street kid know so much?
The police spend the night probing Jamal's past, recounting his life in the slums where he and his brother grew up, of their adventures together on the road, of vicious encounters with local gangs, and of Latika (Pinto), the girl he loved and lost.
Starring Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Rajendranath Zutshi, Freida Pinto, Irfan Khan
Directed by Danny Boyle ('Trainspotting', 'Sunshine')
Written by Simon Beaufoy (based on the novel by Vikas Swarup)
Festivals & Awards Winner of 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay - Academy Awards 2009. Best Film, Best Director, Best Screenplay - BAFTA Awards 2009. Best Film (Drama), Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Original Score - Golden Globes 2009.
Drama, Adaptation, Comedy | 2hr 0mins | Rated (R13) | contains violence & offensive language | Origin: UK, USA | Language: English, Hindi with English subtitles | NZ Distributor: Hoyts Distribution | Official Site »
- Trailers
- Reviews
-
- SHARE:
- SHARE:
The Talk
17 votes / No comments
Flicks review
-
4
Within moments of Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire beginning, we find ourselves racing through the crowded slums of Mumbai, bombarded with colour and sound, grabbing our armrests as this cinematic super-pill hits our bloodstream. Rarely has a film felt so alive. Boyle intersperses the pulsating energy with flickery slo-mo, hits it with a blistering M.I.A. soundtrack, and even gives the subtitles a personality.
Kind of frustrating, then, that the second half turns into a rather conventional, predictable and plodding love story - one where the characters say “I’m in love” a lot but you never actually believe it. This very contemporary (and perhaps culturally significant) merging of British independence with Bollywood melodrama works best during the flashback scenes to the characters’ childhoods. The cheeky little street urchins are far more interesting than their teenage incarnations. Dev Patel (from TV’s Skins), as the older Jamal, seems a bit too earnest and subdued considering his character's tumultuous upbringing.
But yes, I got swept up at the end. As will everyone. There’s no denying the solid crowd pleaser structure behind this. And good on director Danny Boyle for varying his style once again. By filming 75% of the movie on small digital cameras, some of them prototypes, and taking a skeleton crew deep into the slums, he’s created a vibrant, pungent, scrappy little underdog tale.
SHARE:
The people's reviews
26 reviews
Press Reviews
-
Chicago Sun-Times [Roger Ebert]
When I saw "Slumdog Millionaire" at Toronto, I was witnessing a phenomenon: dramatic proof that a movie is about how it tells itself. I walked out of the theater and flatly predicted it would win the Audience Award. Seven days later, it did. And that it could land a best picture Oscar nomination. We will see. It is one of those miraculous entertainments that achieves its immediate goals and keeps climbing toward a higher summit.
Read full review -
Empire [UK]
5
Danny Boyle's finest since "Trainspotting." In fact, it's the best British/Indian gameshow-based romance of the millennium.
Read full review -
FilmThreat.com [USA]
4
Absolutely perfect family entertainment for anyone over the age of ten. It is a celebration of not just the usual triumph of the human spirit, but a celebration of the human experience.
Read full review -
Hollywood Reporter
What's perhaps most fascinating about the film is Boyle's relentless focus on the realities of present-day India as a vehicle for his spectacle and laughs.
Read full review -
Los Angeles Times
A Hollywood-style romantic melodrama that delivers major studio satisfactions in an ultra-modern way, was made on the streets of India with largely unknown stars by a British director who never makes the same movie twice? Go figure.
Read full review -
New York Times
A gaudy, gorgeous rush of color, sound and motion, “Slumdog Millionaire,” the latest from the British shape-shifter Danny Boyle, doesn’t travel through the lower depths, it giddily bounces from one horror to the next. A modern fairy tale about a pauper angling to become a prince...
Read full review -
San Francisco Chronicle
The movie takes audiences to the poorest sections of India and shows a level of poverty and human misery that's almost beyond our imagining - and yet so pervasive that people seem to take it in stride, as an unalterable fact. The movie provides an indelible education into how other people live, and that's a noble function. We get the range of modern Indian life, from the technological sophistication of its television stations to the primitive shacks in which people live in crushing proximity to one another. The film is so vivid that you can almost smell it, and there are images that will linger with viewers for a long time.
Read full review -
Variety [USA]
Driven by fantastic energy and a torrent of vivid images of India old and new, Slumdog Millionaire is a blast.
Read full review
View more trailers close window
-
Loading the player ...
Search For a DVD
I beg your pardon?
- Flicks.co.nz is serving the great nation of NZ with all things cinematic. Question about a movie or cinema? Thoughts on the site? Quips, gripes, advice for our own personal self-development?
- Get in touch with us by email at ED@ FLICKS.CO.NZ,on TWITTER oron FACEBOOK.
Want to see it
What say you? Yes No
Be the first to comment!