Slumdog Millionaire

Considering the totally unexpected runaway success of this rags-to-riches movie, it feels as though the world is ready for some social reality after several decades of lavish feasts. British director Danny Boyle, who earlier made Millions and 28 Days later, has hit Bollywood (or the Indian film industry based in Mumbai, aka Bombay), with a taste of its own formula in Slumdog Millionaire.
The film explores Bombay’s glitz-and-glamour, and reveals its underbelly of corruption and entrenched class biases, both with equal ease. Not without humour, and also containing a song-and-dance routine typical of Bombay’s films, Slumdog Millionaire is being welcomed in for great performances, including by the aging superstar, Anil Kapur who plays a gameshow host.
Considered a contender for multiple Oscars, Slumdog has all the right elements: A street urchin hoping to make it big, the adult world that tries to fob him off, and an eventually suspenseful, soulful twist in the tale, all packed into a racy theme. The movie is about what the telly means today, and how anyone—almost anyone—can arrive using its get-rich-quick themes and then be poised to lose it all.
With Slumdog, however, you feel as though you are transported into another world, not the one in which India is shining, but the other one, filled with poverty and squalor. Fast paced and stylish, this flick is about whom we would trust, and whom we would ‘naturally’ mistrust. Slumdog made it as a Golden Globe nominee for best motion picture — drama, best screenplay and best director.