All Slumdogs Go To Heaven

Could an urchin from the Mumbai slums win 20 million rupees on a TV game show? Would he have the smarts? Could it be his destiny? Better yet, will he get the girl and a raging Bollywood dance number at film’s end? Slumdog Millionaire (opening November 12) addresses all these questions. And with director Danny Boyle’s (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) epic visuals, crisp editing and visceral storytelling, it’s ridiculously entertaining.

Wearing its garish title proudly, Slumdog Millionaire is a Dickensian potboiler about Jamal (Dev Patel), a plucky kid from the gutter (and Mumbai’s gutters are major) who endures child-slaveholders, an outhouse dunking (yep, its gross), street gangs, a murdered mom and brutal cops to face off against India’s smarmy answer to Regis Philbin on Mumbai’s take on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? But once he’s on the verge of scoring the big prize, he’s arrested under suspicion of cheating (which they investigate using methods of torture otherwise reserved for Guantanamo, or at least Cinemax After Dark). Is Jamal a fraud, or are bigger forces at work? By the time you’ve made it though his story —packed with humor, suspense and some quality time at the Taj Mahal — the final answer will be clear.


Slumdog Millionaire opens in select cities November 12, and then wider over the following weeks, from Fox Searchlight.