Slambang Billionaire

What will we ever do for love?

A cliche of a question when put into a great story, a director who knows how to approach transitions, and actors who fit in like a glove to a hand becomes a rather compelling feel good story in Slumdog Millionaire.

This movie would have been as effective is shot in the Philippine slums. The first few scenes with the boys running from the police brought back images of the slums in Caloocan or in Valenzuela, having been a temporary resident. Rivers floating with garbage and dump going straight to wherever the river flows are just two things which I have seen firsthand. The movie simply shows that we are not alone. Poverty has the same results - pollution, uneducation, street smarts, and of course crime.

Danny Boyle (28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later) breathes a new kind of approach to this kind of film. Had it been that this was helmed by a Pinoy director, we will be deluged with melodramatic sequences, a wailing ceremony for the mother's burial, a lot of unnecessary rape scenes, and ultimately a Willie of Fortune type of treatment to the game show.

What we are served is a behind the scenes approach to the game show. The gameshow host plays it perfectly as the arrogant, controlling star who doesn't want to be overshadowed by an unlikely player. The player, Jamal, is the unconventional contestant who is unmoved and has this couldn't-care-less attitude on the 20 million pot. This is essentially captured when in a reversal of roles, Jamal asks the gameshow host, "Are you nervous?"

The storytelling of the flashbacks are done in the right taste. It does not glamorize nor it does not tone down. I was at the verge of vomiting when he jumped to a pool of poop just to get an autograph of Piolo Pascual's equivalent. And I was rooting when he was covered in the same poop as he jumped in joy at getting autograph. I was cringing when the crime lord who recruited street children to beg for alms was putting in lead to a boy's eye to make him a more profitable blind beggar. I was literally rooting for them to get on the train when they were escaping from the crime lord, or when Latika was running to get her phone to complete the Phone a Friend lifeline. It is rare that I get involved in movies, but Slumdog Millionaire brings me on the edge of the seat.

Maybe it is just our own similarities in life that we can easily root for the underdog. We have the same similar situations: impoverished people have all tried different ways to earn money, from collecting garbage, scrubbing floors, to joining game shows. What makes this more close to the heart is the universal cliche of moving mountains for love. Holding on to promises. Joining game shows just to be seen by the one you love. Giving your life for a brother. Winning all the money in the world to be with the one you love. Sounds cheesy, but nonetheless, all right to the taste buds.

9 out of 10.