I will be careful to mark all the spoiler parts, but if you plan on seeing it and want to be completely surprised by everything (including the super clever framing device), then just don't read this.
The movie started out with us finding out that the main character, Jamal, is under suspect for cheating because he got to 10 million rupees (the equivalent to about 500,000) on the Indian version of "Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?". The police watch the episode of the show Jamal is on, and Jamal tells his life story to the police, each story having in it the answer to a question. It is really clever, and may sound a bit contrived, but it works really well and is believable when you see it.
The beginning 20ish minutes of the movie are really hard to watch. You see some of the horrible things that happen to children. SPOILER: He sees his mother killed, is tortured, beaten, and there are some even worse things that happen to some of the children, like being blinded with a hot spoon so they can get more money when they beg on the street.
Throughout his memories, there are 2 main reoccurring characters, Jamal's brother Salim, and his love interest Latika. Everyone in the movie is very great, but there were no standout fantastic performances in my opinion.
After we see how Jamal got to this point in his life, that is, being in the police station being interrogated, the story continues in a regular format, and I don't want to ruin the ending for you or any of the great scenes so I won't say anything more.
The first half hour was a bit slow, but from there on the movie really found it's stride, and during some of the last moments I was really hoping that everything would work out for the characters.
Overall, the movie was very good. My only two complaints were that the camera work was not fantastic (it overused the diagonal angle a bit), and that they dragged out the moment when we find out if Jamal won the game or not a bit to much, and it lost some of the excitement.
I highly recommend it, and I definitely think you should see it. It will probably win the best picture Oscar, and I would not be disappointed if it did. Hopefully I will see Doubt and Milk before the Oscars, and I can have an opinion on which is best (I'm not really interested in Benjamin Button, it seems kind of Oscar grubbing and contrived).
I give this movie 9 million rupees out of 10
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yeah the camera work prolly wasnt as good because it was an independent film, but i liked it. Omigosh the ending was so good! i loved the part where she was running to pick up teh cell phone and i was like "HOLY FUCKING SHIT, FASTER LATIKA! FASTER YOU WHORE!"
ReplyDeletei can tell you that Doubt isnt amazing. i thought it was slow and boring and i did not clearly get the message fo the movie. i think it is better adapted for the stage.never saw Milk.
i really hope S.M. wins tons of awards! woot!