Slumdog Millionaire – Blu-ray Review

By Jeff Swindoll Apr 1, 2009, 11:19 GMT

Jamal Malik (Patel), an 18 year-old orphan from the slums of Mumbai, 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 "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 ...more

Danny Boyle directs this Indian fairytale about how one lad from the slums rose up to win big on the country’s version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?”.  Not only did the lad win gold, but also Boyle and the film would go on to sweep through the Oscars and walk away with eight gold statues – including best picture.  

When we find Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), he’s being tortured by a police inspector (Irrfan Khan) and a constable (Saurabh Shukla).  We think that he might be a criminal, but we find out that he’s a contestant on the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire?” game show. 

Jamal is a lowly kid from the slums who serves tea to telemarketers.  The thought is that he’s cheating on the show and the host, Prem Kumar (Anil Kapoor), has turned him over to the authorities to find out the truth.  Jamal is able to show how his life experiences have given him the ability to answer each of the questions posed to him. 

He’s only appearing on the show in the hopes that his true love, Latika (Freida Pinto), will see him since she’s a dedicated viewer.  However, she’s the moll of gangster Javed (Mahesh Manjrekar) who also employs Jamal’s brother Salim (Madhur Mittal) as a thug.  

For coming out of a slum, Slumdog Millionaire is actually a colorful, uplifting film.  The film is director Danny Boyle’s tribute to Bollywood spectacle.  However, I think he also owes a great deal of debt to Hollywood, Longfellow Deeds, and Frank Capra. 

Jamal is like an everyman and before the “Millionaire” show is through the whole country of India is rooting for this street boy made good.  Of course, we get to see in the flashbacks that Malik’s (played by Ayush Mahesh Khedekar and Tanay Chheda when younger) life has been a hard one, but he’s the more sensitive of the brothers as Salim (played by Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Ashutosh Lobo Gajiwala when younger) is the brother made harder by the street life. 

The two boys find their third musketeer when Latika (played by Rubina Ali and Tanvi Ganesh Lonkar when younger) happens into their lives and the timid, innocent Jamal falls for her.  All of the actors cast in these roles, both young and elder, are exceptional. 

The kids do perhaps get more of the praise since they seem to have more screen time.  Some of the child actors were actually found in the Mumbai slums and cast in the film (Ismail and Ali are the two leads, but several of the slum kids are really slum kids).  There was some controversy since the kids were in the film and basically returned to their homes in the slums. 

They were flown into Hollywood for the Oscars, but again were returned to their parents in the slums.  The production has set up a trust fund for them as well as education plans though.  So perhaps they too will have their rags-to-riches story come true one day. Let’s hope so since they performed so well in the film.

It’s obvious that it’s a Westerner’s fantasy film since everyone speaks English so well, with just some India lingo throw in for good measure (“Chai wallah”).  Perhaps, English is more spoken there than I realize since most of our technical call centers are located there now I suppose.  It did strike me odd that the film relied on English so often, especially for the scenes when the kids are in the slums.

I wouldn’t imagine that English is prevalent there.  It’s certainly a hard life living there, no matter how romanticized it may be for the film.  It is a film after all and if we were to see the true squalor and hopelessness of the slums then it might not have one best picture or have been as uplifting as it is.  

Slumdog Millionaire is presented in a 1080p high definition transfer (2.35:1).  Special features include two commentaries. 

The first is with director Danny Boyle and actor Dev Patel.  The second is from producer Christian Colson and writer Simon Beaufoy.  The only special features that are in high definition are the 5 minute “Slumdog Cutdown” music video and the 2 minute theatrical trailer.  The remainder of the special features is in standard definition. 

They include the 23 minute “Slumdog Dreams: Danny Boyle and the making of Slumdog Millionaire” and 33 minutes of deleted scenes.  The Blu-ray also exclusively has the 5 minute “From Script to Screen: The Toilet Scene,” the 3 minute “Bombay Liquid Dance” music video, the 41 minute short film “Manjha,” the European theatrical trailer, and disc two is a digital copy for your PC or portable device.  

Slumdog Millionaire may have the feel of a foreign film but it owes much to both Bollywood, even including a dance number, and the films of Hollywood past (I’m thinking Capra here).  It’s an uplifting, fun, and colorful film and looks fantastic on Blu-ray.  

Slumdog Millionaire [Blu-ray] is now available at Amazon. Visit the DVD database for more information.