Slumdog Millionaire

"Slumdog Millionaire," Danny Boyle's underdog movie about a slum kid in India who defies all odds and follows his heart into the final rounds of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire," won eight Academy Awards (including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Cinematography) and turned into a surprise hit in Britain and the United States (though, oddly enough, not in India). Zipping back and forth through flashbacks told by adult Jamal (Dev Patel), the film tells the tale of an orphaned child surviving the horrors of poverty, predation, crime, torture and betrayal, and risking everything for a girl (Freida Pinto). Boyle directs with dynamic energy and vibrant, vivid visuals set to a throbbing score of Indian pop tunes. It's a Dickensian drama with all the emotional turmoil of a Bollywood gangster romance thriller without the dance numbers (until the end credits, anyway), one of the most loved films of 2008, and one of the most critically disparaged for its melodramatic fantasy and exoticized poverty.

Director Boyle provides a lot of production information in his commentary track with Patel, while a second commentary by producer Christian Colson and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy offers even more background information (and Beaufoy has plenty to share from his research trips to India). They are far more informative than the promotional featurette "Slumdog Dreams: Danny Boyle and the Making of Slumdog Millionaire" (which appears to be made for cable), while "Slumdog Cutdown" condenses the entire film into a five-minute music video montage. Also features 12 deleted/extended scenes and a digital copy of the film for portable media players. There's also a Blu-ray edition, but it did not arrive in time to review.