(2008; English and Hindi) By happenstance, by coincidence, by luck, by fate through destiny (for it is written) - not unlike the stories of Alexandre Dumas père - Jamal Malik (Dev Patel), an uneducated eighteen-year-old (who had been serving tea at a call center) from Mumbai, becomes a contestant on India's version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? with one question between him and 20 million rupees. "You're on a dream run," says the show's host (Anil Kapoor).

Having correctly answered questions about movie stars, poets, deities, the portrait on a US $100 bill, the inventor of the revolver, the location of Cambridge Circus, and a cricketer, he's suspected of fraud - what's the possibility of a slumdog knowing the answers? - arrested, and tortured. The police inspector (Irrfan Khan) demands: "Tell me how you cheated."

Simon Beaufoy's screenplay, adapted from Vikas Swarup's novel, Q&A, directed by Danny Boyle, has plenty of energy and excitement, ending with an exuberant, big Bollywood-production musical finale, "Jaiho," from A.R. Rahman, who composed the movie's score, accompanying the credits.

Jamal explains to the inspector how he came up with the correct answers to each of the multiple-choice questions. The film flashes back to the childhood of "the man who knows all the answers" for each explication.

Locked inside an outdoor privy as India's most famous movie star lands in a helicopter nearby, little Jamal (Ayush Mahesh Khedekar) jumps into the shithole to get out and run through the crowd to have a photograph of the celebrity autographed. A Hindu mob attacks his Muslim neighborhood, killing his mother, torching his abode; he and his older brother Salim live by their wits, joined by another orphan, Latika, "the third musketeer."

Taken to an orphanage, the children become professional beggars under the control of Maman. Salim saves Jamal, but as they flee, jumping onto a freight train, they lose Latika. Reaching the Taj Mahal the pair become unofficial tour guides and thieves, but as a teenager (Tanay Hemant Chheda - both younger actors are darker skinned than Patel), Jamal insists on returning to Mumbai to search for Latika, whom he has never forgot, among the city's teeming millions.

He encounters a blind boy, begging and singing, he'd known from Maman's organization with a one-hundred-dollar-bill in the donation plate; Salim has obtained a Colt .45 with which he makes his way into the gangland. Jamal rediscovers Latika, known as Cherry the dancer, whom with Salim's daring they rescue; but he then loses her again, for which he tells Salim: "I will never forgive you."

Hearing all of this, the cop allows it may be "bizarrely plausible," releasing the boy - "I'm on the show because I thought she'd be watching" - to participate in the TV contest, which has become hugely popular. The final question asks: Who was the third musketeer in Alexandre Dumas's novels?

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Copyright © 2009 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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