Slumdog Millionaire

 Year:  2008

Director:  Danny Boyle

Screenplay:  Simon Beaufoy, based on the novel Q & A by Vikas Swarup

Starring:  Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Irrfan Khan

Running Time:  120 minutes

Genre:  Drama

Mumbai:  Eighteen year old orphan Jamal Malik (Patel) is one question away from winning the grand prize of 20 million rupees on the Indian version of TV game show Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, when he is arrested by the police on suspicion of cheating.  During his brutal interrogation, which includes torture,  it is revealed that each of his answers to the questions relate to some incident in his tough life, growing up in the Juhu slum.

This is a film which mixes hard-hitting drama and feel-good romanticism to create a vibrant, entertaining and ultimately uplifting fable.  The film moves between Jamal's police interrogation, his appearance on the game show, and flashbacks illustrating his life, triggered by each question.  Danny Boyle directs with a kinetic visual style making full use of his large repertoire of cinematic tricks, including fact motion, slow motion, over-saturated colours, superimpositions and more.  Mumbai itself makes for a colourful, lively setting, becoming more like a character in it's own right than just a backdrop, and in Boyle's heavy use of overly bright yellow, gold and orange colours in the daylight scenes, you can almost feel the heat radiating from the screen.  Dev Patel makes for an engaging lead, with some very good work from Frieda Pinto, in her film debut, as Latika, the girl that Jamal fell in love with when they were children, and has spent most of his life searching for.  Madhur Mittal gives an impressive, layered performance Salim, Jamal's volatile older brother.  Anil Kapoor plays the slick gameshow host and Irrfan Khan plays the Police Inspector leading the interrogation.  The film is sometimes uneven in it's tone, with the grim scenes of life on the streets of Mumbai, at odds with the more whimsical scenes, but by the end the film had won me over.  The film is also very funny in places, particularly a scene where a very young Jamal (Aysuh Mahesh Khedekar) goes to extreme lengths to get his favourite movie star's autograph, and a scene set in a call centre.

Dec Patel and Freida Pinto in Slumdog Millionaire

Inferno

Year of Release:  2016
Director:  Ron Howard
Screenplay:  David Koepp, based on the novel Inferno by Dan Brown
Starring:  Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Irrfan Khan
Running Time:  121 minutes
Genre:  thriller, adventure
 
In present day Florence, Italy, Professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) wakes up in a hospital bed with concussion, bizarre apocalyptic visions and no memory of the past couple of days.  He immediately finds himself being hunted by hired killers and, along with a hospital doctor Sienna Brooks (Jones), goes on the run.  The two find themselves embroiled in a plot by a scientist who intends to "save" humanity from it's overpopulation crisis, by wiping out billions of people with his deadly "Inferno" virus.

The above is not a spoiler.  We learn about the Inferno virus before the opening credits have finished.  This will be familiar ground to fans of previous Dan Brown adaptations, such as The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels and Demons (2009).  It's structured like a scavenger hunt, with Langdon and Brook deciphering clues secreted in ancient works of art and Dante's The Divine Comedy which sends them to the next clue.  The outcome is never really in doubt, and the film drags in it's first hour, but it does pick up pace, and the ending is quite exciting.  The story is of course completely ludicrous as the plots and double-crosses mount up.  However the idea of Langdon being incapacitated and not able to make full use of his greatest asset, his mind, in initially interesting but it rapidly fades away.  The villains are also intriguing in that they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing, although I suppose that is true of most people.

The film is well-cast, with Tom Hanks as appealing and engaging as ever, and Felicity Jones and Sidse Babett Knudsen providing strong support.

 Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones search for clues in Inferno