Slumdog Millionaire (2008) ****1/2

When I sat there watching Slumdog Millionaire I kept thinking about Charles Dickens. The story is so wrapped into Dicken's lore that it's hard not to fall into that trap. The film follows Jamal (Dev Patel), a slumdog in Mubai, as he becomes orphaned and goes through the hell of trying to stay alive in India with his brother Salim and a girl they stumble on named Latika (Frieda Pinto). As time goes by Jamal sees the slums ground into the earth by the new hotel developments and continues to carry the love he has for Latika, even though he is never in a position to do anything about it. He resorts to becoming a contestant on her favorite television show, the Indian version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, going further than anyone has gone before on the show and causing the producers to think that he's cheating somehow.

There are many things that jump out at you in Slumdog. The first is the amazing cinematography director Danny Boyle utilizes to show the scale of the slums and India as a whole. It's almost like a travel video from hell. There's also the performances of the two leads, Patel and Pinto. I've already heard about the numerous offers these two great young actors are getting. In Slumdog you know that Jamal loves her, but you can never really gauge her feelings toward him. Does she love him or not? That's the answer that you die to find out as he film progresses and Pinto plays it up, never letting her hand be seen until the time is just right. Going beyond the two leads there are a pair of performances that are even more amazing. The two children that play the young Jamael and Salim (Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail and Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) were outstanding. I was blown away by the performance they give us in this picture. I'm still in awe over these two kids that atced rings around most of todays adult Hollywood talent.

Slumdog Millionaire seems to have developed an either love it or hate it audience out there. People I talk to seem to be split 50/50 on whether this was as good a film as the Academy would have you believe. It's one of the gems of 2008, a real standout in a year that had its good and had its bad. Did it deserve the Oscar? You can't really answer that because does nay film ever deserve the Oscar. It does earn a place as one of the best films of last year.