Critical Film Review

CRITICAL FILM REVIEW
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(February 13, 2012)
Critical Film Review
Every film has themes that are developed to educate, entertain and inform the public; this is developed in the story line. Through such themes society comes to learn issues that affect them negatively or positively and make them learn new and beneficial issues. The movie covered in this paper is Slumdog Millionaire, of 2008 and directed by Danny Boyle and Loveleen Tandan. It critically reviews the themes that are developed in the movie and how they overlap with the themes studied in the readings, lessons and tutorials.
The movie is about an eighteen year old lad in Mumbai India, named Jamal Malik who is a former slum and street boy. He has lived much of his life in the slums struggling to makes ends meet. Luckily he is able to participate in the reality show program named “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”; he is however suspected of cheating because the police think that a slum boy cannot be able to answer the questions in the contest. Since he lives in the slums the term Slumdog Millionaire is used to represent Jamal and his background and what he becomes later in his life. His life is able to drive him to the top as he narrates his story to redeem himself from the accusations made against him by the police. The flashback of his life saves him and is back to the contest as he remembers his brother Salim who sells his Bollywood star autograph; his mother who died in the Bombay riots and later meets Latika.
The theme developed in the film is poverty and suffering; the life of the main characters is based on poverty. Firstly, Jamal, Salim and Latika live in a life of poverty and even sell their valuables to make a living. They also make a living through dish washing; conning people and pick pocketing and travelling at the top of trains since they have no money. The crime in the slum neighborhood represents all other slums as many are the same with drug barons, and illegal weapons and illegal prostitution to benefit the rich. This can be identified in the murder of Salim because he rescued Latika from prostitution. The title comes to bridge the gap between the poor and rich and bring together a common society that lives in harmony.
Globalization is also reflected on the in the film in the view of the fact that the story is based in Mumbai India but it is a British film. The debut is international and reflects the major issues that affect the society globally. For instance, the issue of poverty is a major issue globally that needs to tackled (Appadurai, 1990). The issue of crime is global and is an interrelated facto...