Slumdog Millionaire (2008)

Academy Awards, USA
Year	Result	Award	Category/Recipient(s)
2009	Won	Oscar	Best Achievement in Cinematography Anthony Dod Mantle
			Best Achievement in Directing Danny Boyle
			Best Achievement in Film Editing Chris Dickens
			Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Score A.R. Rahman
			Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song A.R. Rahman (music) Gulzar (lyrics) For the song "Jai Ho".
			Best Achievement in Sound Mixing Ian Tapp Richard Pryke Resul Pookutty
			Best Motion Picture of the Year Christian Colson
			Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay Simon Beaufoy
	Nominated	Oscar	Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures, Original Song A.R. Rahman Maya Arulpragasam For the song "O Saya".
			Best Achievement in Sound Editing Tom Sayers Glenn Freemantle

Fox Searchlight/Warner Bros.
Directed by Danny Boyle
My rating: 3 stars out of 4
IMDb
(Blu-ray, Fox)

A boy from the slums of Mumbai, India, becomes a national TV hero on a game show. Remarkably, the questions he is asked on the show are all related to his life. It's and odd way to frame a story, and I'm not sure it could have been told better without it. Anyway, as a young boy, he befriends another "slumdog" and together they grow up on the streets. His mother is killed, leaving him homeless. The two friends take in a third, a girl, and their love story is really the heart of the movie. As teenagers, they hustle tourists at the Taj Mahal, but eventually return to the big city. His friend becomes a gangster and the girl forced into virtual slavery. He becomes obsessed with finding her again, with the hopes she would see him on TV. Danny Boyle's flashy direction may have worked on Trainspotting but it's inappropriate for the subject matter here: watching slum kids being chased by the police accompanied by frantic editing and in-your-face music is giving the scene more dramatic emphasis than necessary, and he does it on several occasions. Nonetheless, the underlying story is interesting enough to overcome the heavy-handed direction, but instead of a great film it is merely a good one.