Slumdog Millionaire – A Must Watch

This past week, I had a chance to watch Slumdog Millionaire. Though I heard a lot about it, I was a bit skeptical going in as I am more than aware of the hype Indian movies generate and seldom do they actually deliver...But I could not have been more surprised.

Slumdog Millionaire follows Jamal Malik, a teenage orphan from the ghettos of Mumbai who is one question away from winning 20 million rupees on the Indian version of the trivia game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire. The movie starts off with Jamal getting tortured to get him to confess how he cheated, to his appearance on the show. The cops simply can't believe a kid who grew up on a garbage heap would know anything about anything, and tortures the kid in the hopes of getting a confession. The only snag is Jamal isn't lying and he didn't cheat. We learn the history of Jamal and the other principal characters in flashbacks, as Jamal answers questions on the TV show not from book knowledge — he has none — but his own life experiences. The movie takes you back to the various events and phases throughout his youth that led to him to really knowing the answers to the questions.

The scenes that take place in the slums are so real and it shows a level of poverty and misery that's almost beyond our imagining - and yet so real. The only let down is that by a wild coincidence, the quiz show's questions, taken in order, correspond chronologically with traumas in Jamal's young life and not to mention a fantastic actor like Irfan Khan has been wasted in an insignificant role. But the movie as a whole is a compelling piece of entertainment and is a modern version of the Cinderella story with some spicy food. The other surprising element about the movie is the music. AR.Rahman has given a smashing soundtrack and M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes” is prominently featured in the film. Only after seeing the movie did I connect the dots.

The movie is filled with humor, romance and suspense, and is easily one of the best films I have watched this year. I highly recommend it.