Slumdog Millionaire

The movie Slumdog Millionaire contains a lot of contradiction (even the title itself). The story centres around a young man, Jamal (Dev Patel), who is an uneducated boy from the slums of Mumbai and yet he knows all the answers on a trivia show. He also has no interest in money and yet he is on a show that's purpose is to make the contestant rich.

The movie begins with Jamal getting questioned, and by questioned I mean tortured, because he is suspected of cheating his way through the show Who Wants to be a Millionaire? Once the torture stops Jamal tells his life story which explains how he knew the answer to each question. Through his stories we are introduced to his brother Salim (Mudhur Mittal) and his love Latika (Frieda Pinto). We also see the incredibly hard life that Jamal has led. Once the police officer is convinced that Jamal has not cheated he is let go so that he may return to the show to answer the final question. Through his story we find out that the reason Jamal is on the show is so that he may find Latika.

Jamal is faced with a question that is also from his past, but he does not know it. When he and his brother were younger they called themselves the Musketeers. They were Athos and Porthos. When Latika came into their lives Jamal said that she could be the third, but they did not know the third Musketeer's name. Jamal's final question: In the Alexandre Dumas novel The Three Musketeers there is Athos and Porthos, what is the name of the third Musketeer?
(a) Aramis (b) Cardinal de Richelieu (c) d'Artagnan (d) Planchet. Jamal still did not know the third Musketeer's name so he had to use his last lifeline. [I got the answer right, did you?]

*Spoiler*

Jamal phones his brother (the only number he has), but Salim had given his phone to Latika. She answers and Jamal has already won since he has finally found her. Neither of them know the answer and so he takes a guess, (a) Aramis. He wins the money and they are able to run away together.

I loved the way that this film is designed in that we discover how Jamal's life experience has given him the answers to questions on the show. I did find that the scenes where he was actually in the studio were a little odd in that they stuck out stylistically from the rest of the movie.

Slumdog Millionaire gets two kernels - a great story concept, but there was something that held it back from being an amazing movie.