Slumdog Millionaire |  | Actors: Dev Patel, Anil Kapoor, Saurabh Shukla, Rajendranath Zutshi
Studio: Twentieth Century Fox
List Price: $29.98
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as of 3/19/2010 04:00 CDT details
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Rating:  398 reviews
Sales Rank: 344
Format: NTSC, Widescreen
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: R (Restricted)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 120 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: FOXD2257441D
UPC: 024543574415
EAN: 0024543574415
ASIN: B001P9KR8U
Theatrical Release Date: 2008
Release Date: March 31, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
A MUMBAI TEEN WHO GREW UP IN THE SLUMS, BECOMES A CONTESTANT ON THE INDIAN VERSION OF 'WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE?'. HE IS ARRESTED FOR CHEATING & WHILE BEING INTERROGATED, EVENTS FROM HIS LIFE HISTORY ARE SHOWN WHICH EXPLAIN WHY HE KNOWS THE ANSWERS. 1/3 IS IN HINDI WITH ENGLISH SUBTITLES-REST IN ENGLISH
Amazon.com
Danny Boyle (Sunshine) directed this wildly energetic, Dickensian drama about the desultory life and times of an Indian boy whose bleak, formative experiences lead to an appearance on his country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" Jamal (played as a young man by Dev Patel) and his brother are orphaned as children, raising themselves in various slums and crime-ridden neighorhoods and falling in, for a while, with a monstrous gang exploiting children as beggars and prostitutes. Driven by his love for Latika (Freida Pinto), Jamal, while a teen, later goes on a journey to rescue her from the gang's clutches, only to lose her again to another oppressive fate as the lover of a notorious gangster. Running parallel with this dark yet irresistible adventure, told in flashback vignettes, is the almost inexplicable sight of Jamal winning every challenge on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," a strong showing that leads to a vicious police interrogation. As Jamal explains how he knows the answer to every question on the show as the result of harsh events in his knockabout life, the chaos of his existence gains shape, perspective and soulfulness. The film's violence is offset by a mesmerizing exotica shot and edited with a great whoosh of vitality. Boyle successfully sells the story's most unlikely elements with nods to literary and cinematic conventions that touch an audience's heart more than its head. --Tom Keogh
Stills from Slumdog Millionaire (Click for larger image)
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 398
 A Western film that finds virtue in being a Western film March 11, 2010
H. Paul Moon (Washington, DC)
So I just sat down with Slumdog Millionaire for the first time. Even if I adore the cinematic medium, I avoid the Academy Awards like the plague, and when that time came I decided to watch this film instead which happens to have won in 2009's major categories. As the film came out, I was into the thick of travel, and moreover the film didn't seem to me like a good fit for Danny Boyle's style. No less, it is one of those films about foreign poverty, with a grand conscience, and those can just turn out awful. My perception is that, inevitably, people patronized (and then patronized) the film with work-righteous emotions fit for the occasion, and its distributors piled onto that package with the moniker that it was the "feel-good movie of the year." No thanks.
But I watched it anyway, because it was just remastered onto Blu-Ray and I became an admirer of Danny Boyle's wild directorial style from his science fiction masterpiece Sunshine, which ranks with Kubrick's 2001 and Tarkovsky's Solaris as perfected speculative fiction, lacking any mess of cowboys and indians in space with noises magically permeating vacuums.
Something surprised me about Slumdog Millionaire, though I ultimately found it flawed from its failure to resist utter sappiness with a hyper-romantic disregard of reality (too many perfect coincidences; it might as well have tried to be a Greek drama about gods and fates). The surprise for me was in its brash, stylistic disregard for the culture. Boyle shot the film with agitated camera movements, super-wide-angle lenses (practically fish-eyed), avant-garde compositions, skewed framings, and so forth -- in other words, idiomatic to Boyle's modernist style. Yet, if the original vision were that of the typical Birkenstock-armored documentarian (I am surrounded by them), all of these stylistic measures would be a violation. It is in fact only at the end of the film (train station dancing sequence) where the Hindi cultural sensibility of Bollywood bridges the gap, and it becomes a merged work of cinema.
And that is the whole point. A Westerner visiting India arrives a Westerner and leaves a Westerner -- show me exceptions and I'll show you a skeptic. The pretense of all filmmakers, composers, authors and visual artists who immerse themselves for the purpose of divining native art is perfectly inauthentic. (Notably, my favorite living composer, Philip Glass, "invented" the last major movement in serious contemporary music -- Minimalism -- under the guidance of Ravi Shankar when tasked with transcribing microtonal indigenous ragas into Western notation. Minimalism, and Glass's Minimalism, does not sound Indian, yet those Eastern fingerprints are all over the place.)
It only increased my otherwise simple affection for the film when I surfed around a bit only to find significant mass criticism against it for failing (in one fell swoop?) to "capture" the spirit and the desolation of Mumbai. I also find it comical as well as hypocritical that many are quite furious to know that the untrained child actors are still living amidst the depicted poverty. Surely they can only be prosperous and happy in comparison to Western standards of heavyweight wealth! And surely, snatching them from that "slumdog" environment will solve it all.
 Product promptly delivered as described! March 4, 2010
I. Schneider (Medway, MA United States)
Product arrived as described in record time! Would do business again! The movie is awesome work of art everyone should see!
Uplifting and full of truth!
dvd "Slumdog Millionaire" February 22, 2010
Giselle Karney
Slumdog Millionaire
Very happy about prompt delivery - product arrived in good shape - as advertised
Fantasy and Squalor! February 17, 2010
Loyd E. Eskildson (Phoenix, AZ.)
Slumdog Millionaire is set in Mumbai (Bombay), India's slums focusing on a young boy Jamal Malik (Dev Patel)
He is a "slumdog", which is slang for street-kid.
The first scene opens up on Jamal who has somehow been selected to appear on India's Version of the TV show, "Who Wants to Be A Millionaire?" Jamal is not expected to win because of his disadvantaged roots, but he has had some unique experiences as a kid that enable him to guess the answers correctly. Many flashbacks are shown as he is interrogated by police on how he knows the correct answers to very difficult questions.
The story flows and moves at a good pace. The life experiences of terrible poverty and treatment of children in Mumbai are both sad and somewhat funny at times. The children know no other life. The movie is full of life experiences as we see Jamal growing up with constant challenges. He falls in love, comes close to death and overcomes many hardships. Everything ends tied together in a neat little package.
Friend Loves It. February 10, 2010
L Quinones (Georgia)
I purchased this DVD to replace a friends that I had lost. She loves it, and I love the fact that it came in a reasonable time and in great condition.The Mistress of SpicesMonsoon WeddingKuch Naa KahoBride and Prejudice
Showing reviews 1-5 of 398
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