SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE (Cert. 15, 120 mins)
Stars: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Irffan Khan, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor
Directed by Danny Boyle

MORE than 25 years after Gandhi swept all before it at the Academy Awards, another British film embedded in Indian culture is poised to conquer the world.

Scripted by Simon Beaufoy (The Full Monty), Slumdog Millionaire is an utterly irresistible rites of passage drama that builds to an extraordinary emotional crescendo.

Employing a simple flashback structure, Danny Boyle’s modern day fairy-tale charts the extraordinary journey of an orphan from the slums of Mumbai to the contestant’s chair on his country’s version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

The suspense within the television studio, where host Prem (Kapoor) poses each multiple-choice question, is nothing compared to the tensions within Beaufoy’s multi- layered screenplay.

In the space of a single vignette, the film glides from sidesplitting comedy to gut-wrenching despair, with an honesty and subtlety that continually catches us off guard.

Indeed, there is as much darkness as light here, including scenes of torture, child abuse, exploitation and degradation that reflect the meagre lot of children born into a rat-run of makeshift housing, detritus, dirty water and shattered dreams.

You won’t need to ask the rest of the audience or phone a friend: from the opening frame, it’s clear that Boyle has hit the jackpot.

Slumdog Millionaire may just be the best film you see all year.

Eighteen-year-old Jamal Malik (Patel) has been raised by older brother Salim (Mittal) since the boys lost their mother to the violence of a religious uprising.

Falling into the clutches of child slave traders and other nefarious types, the youngsters use guile to survive on the streets, encountering a pretty orphan girl called Latika (Pinto) who will change their lives forever.