Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

A Mumbai teen who grew up in the slums, becomes a contestant on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" He is arrested under suspicion of cheating, and while being interrogated, events from his life history are shown which explain why he knows the answers.

Directors:

Danny Boyle, Loveleen Tandan

Writers:

Simon Beaufoy (screenplay), Vikas Swarup (novel)

Stars:

Dev Patel, Saurabh Shukla, Anil Kapoor

Top 250 #198 | Won 8 Oscars. Another 114 wins & 62 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Dev Patel	...	Older Jamal
Saurabh Shukla	...	Sergeant Srinivas
Anil Kapoor	...	Prem
Rajendranath Zutshi	...	Director (as Raj Zutshi)
Jeneva Talwar	...	Vision Mixer
Freida Pinto	...	Older Latika
Irrfan Khan	...	Police Inspector
Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail	...	Youngest Salim
Ayush Mahesh Khedekar	...	Youngest Jamal
Jira Banjara	...	Airport Security Guard (as Hira Banjara)
Sheikh Wali	...	Airport Security Guard
Mahesh Manjrekar	...	Javed
Sanchita Choudhary	...	Jamal's Mother
Himanshu Tyagi	...	Mr Nanda
Sharib Hashmi	...	Prakash

Storyline

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 Kaun Banega Crorepati? (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. Each chapter of Jamal's increasingly layered story reveals where he learned the answers to the show's seemingly impossible quizzes. But one question remains a mystery: what is this young man with no apparent desire for riches really doing on ...

---

Plot Keywords:

question | cheating | slum | millionaire | 2000s | 

---

Taglines:

Love and money... You have mixed them both.

---

Genres:

Drama | Romance | Thriller

---

Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for some violence, disturbing images and language

Details

Official Sites:

Official site Official site [fr]

Country:

UK

Language:

English Hindi French

Release Date:

23 January 2009 (USA)

Also Known As:

Quisiera ser millonario

Filming Locations:

Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend:

£1,827,457 (UK) (9 January 2009)

Gross:

$141,319,195 (USA) (22 May 2009)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Celador Films, Film4, Pathé Pictures International

Technical Specs

Runtime:

120 min

Sound Mix:

SDDS Dolby Digital DTS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

2.35 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

This movie almost was released straight to DVD instead of getting a theatrical release.

---

Goofs

When the policeman handcuffs Jamal to the chair he uses handcuffs that click shut. In India Darby handcuffs are used.

---

Quotes

Jamal Malik: If it wasn't for Rama and Allah, I'd still have a mother.

---

Crazy Credits

Several of the cast perform a traditional Bollywood song and dance number set in a train station over the end credits.

---

Connections

Featured in The Rotten Tomatoes Show: Observe & Report/Gigantic/Hannah Montana: The Movie (2009)

---

Soundtracks

"Jai Ho"
Music by A.R. Rahman
Lyrics by Gulzar
Performed by Sukhwinder Singh, Tanvi Shah and Vijay Prakash

User Reviews

the not so popular, but more sincere views on this pornography of poverty

Sumit Bhattacharya- "I have no problems with the 'West' taking up themes of poverty and highlighting the real India. I can completely understand a foreigner being obsessed with the filth and the poverty -- I too was stunned by the plight of the homeless in New York -- of India. I thought Slumdog is brilliantly shot, and I am willing to forgive Ram dressed as a mix between Shiva and Krishna in a foreign film. But I do have a problem with a story that pretends to be real when in reality it is just a masala film -- the kind we churn out by the dozens in Bollywood.Yes, Slumdog Millionaire is just superficial fluff, mainly because of its gaping plot holes. It should have been much better researched...A R Rahman's music is good, but not the master's best. But -- maybe it's just me -- you never really feel for the adult Jamal. Maybe it has something to do with the acting." Matthew Schneeberger- "I found it impossible to feel emotionally invested with the main characters. All the way up to the final kiss, I truly did not care what happened to Jamal or to Latika. And I'm as sentimental and sappy as the next guy. It's just that this love story didn't work...Yes, despite what the most zealous of naysayers claim, India's problems are real and manifold: extreme poverty, communal violence, child beggary, painful vestiges of the caste system, to name a few. And all of these exist even in modern, urban India, the India of all those Western magazines profiles, the India of business process outsourcing and information technology....

One of the first negative reviews of Slumdog I read was from the blog The Great Bong, who absolutely lacerated it. In it, the blogger wrote, "Well yes these things do happen in India. However the problem is when you show every hellish thing possible all happening to the same person. Then it stretches reason and believability and just looks like you are packing in every negative thing that Westerners perceive about India for the sake of crowd pleasing." He goes on to propose a film about an outlandish string of events happening to an African-American boy in the US, and says, "Even though each of these incidents have actually happened in the United States of America, I would be accused of spinning a fantastic yarn that has no grounding in reality, that has no connection to the 'American experience' and my motivations would be questioned, no matter how cinematically spectacular I made my movie. At the very least, I wouldn't be on 94 percent on Tomatometer and a strong Oscar favorite." He's right. Say an Indian director traveled to New Orleans for a few months to film a movie about Jamal Martin, an impoverished African American who lost his home in Hurricane Katrina, who once had a promising basketball career, but who -- following a drive-by shooting -- now walks with a permanent limp, whose father is in jail for selling drugs, whose mother is addicted to crack cocaine, whose younger sister was killed by gang-violence, whose brother was arrested by corrupt cops, whose first born child has sickle cell anemia, and so on. The movie would be widely panned and laughed out of theaters.

That, to me, is Slumdog Millionaire: contrived, pretentious, absurd, hollow, inauthentic, a pseudo-statement about social justice. And yet today the film stands on the precipice of Hollywood's highest honor, the Academy Award for Best Picture.