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We all Indians are very proud of Slumdog Millionaire for what it has achieved. This was first time that an Oscar has come to India and we are so ga ga about it. In fact this was the first time that Oscar has been awarded from mainstream cinema. I do not feel bad about anything for this time Oscars. I only wanted to retrospect if the movie really showed the actual face of India. It is showing the truth which  a normal Indian ignores. There were some groups in India who infact wanted this word slumdog to be removed from the dictionary itself because they felt it is racist.

I do not see that movie was an effort to show the poverty of India. Many people have criticized that this movie is showing only the bad part of the nation. They feel that India is only those swanky buildings and glittering malls. I do not know how they can ignore the every day sight on traffice signals and road side scenes. Yes, irrespective of which city you live in.

Slumdog is a story of 2 brothers and a girl from the slums of india. The story takes them to different directions. The big brother of two turns into a gangster where as the yougner of two who infact is the hero of the movie is tea server in a call center. See call center. The true image of India in the west now a days. Oh, yes the girl ends up as a show girl with the gangsters. The film shows that the youger boy reaches the hot seat of a game show. Yes the most famous game show in India- “ kaun banega karorpati”.  There is an interesting host of the show which infact was unlike the real hosts of the show- Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan. The real hosts of the show wanted the contestants to win however the reel life  host did not want the hero to win the game show. This was one of the crucial aspect of the movie which made it interesting. The host calls the police to  get the hero arreseted on the charges of fraud at the end of the first day of the show. The police at the police station tortures him by giving him electric shocks just to know how a tea server slumdweller know all the correct answeres.

The answers to the questions were hidden in the dingy slums of Dharavi.  The heaps of garbage, dogs with flees, young hero jumping into a pit full of …., hindu  muslim roits  etc. it showed the rough langage of the few characteristics of the film which together with the superb cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle makes it an ultra realistic movie. Kudos to the director Danny Boyle and co-director Loveleen Tandon for the impressive direction and superb camera takes which shows the minutest of the details of the dirty slum life. The screenplay was outstanding.

All the five  kids have acted great in the movie. Half of the movie revolves around them and they have managed the show very well. It was very natural and realistic. Dev Patel was fine. The actress Frieda Pinto had nothing much of the screen time but she delivered very good performance.  Anil Kapoor was cool. Irrfan Khan as the deadly cop together with Saurabh Shukla gave the top performances together with the child artists. Mahesh Manjrekar was looking a real gangster. He was rough, bad and whatever you may call a gangster. Madhur Mittal as the older brother Salim was quite good.

   The music of the movie is beyond any description. Reason? Well the music had so many nominations for Oscars so what more can be written here. The background score was awsome.  The song “ Jai Ho” is  the mobile caller tone of  50% of the populatino in India who have seen this movie. With a strong language, I must say abusive language, violence in roits, torture, a child being blinded with hot syrup (something), murder and other such things happening in the slums. These violent scenes are quite chilling and tense. 

Overall I would recommend this movie to every person who has a tag “Indian” attached to him/her. A detailed insight into the murky life of slumdwellers. Slumdog Millionaire is one of those movies which has a happy ending. And out of the 10 oscar nominations it would bag atleast three i.e in “cinematography”, “editing” & for the song “Jai Ho”. It is a perfect edge of the seat thriller wrapped in the ghostly realities of slums.