The Thousands

Right now, Mumbai looms in the Western imagination as a place where terrorists gun down tourists in luxury hotels. I can’t work out if now’s a good or a bad time to release Danny Boyle’s lush Mumbai fairytale. But Slumdog Millionaire is so wonderfully filled with human hope and redemption that it’s more vital now than ever.

Jamal Malik (Dev Patel, Skins) is a tea boy in a Mumbai call centre who’s just one question away from winning 20 million rupees on the local version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. Hauled in by the cops on suspicion of cheating, he explains how he learned all the correct answers from life on the street with his unscrupulous brother, Salim – and how he hopes the quiz show will help him win back the love of his life, Latika.

Anyone who’s seen Boyle’s limp The Beach would be right to be suspicious, but Slumdog Millionaire is a triumph: sensitive to brutal realities, yet laugh-out-loud funny; gorgeous on the eye and ear without being Orientalist; laden with dramatic tension, yet tender and meditative. Only the most flint-hearted cynics will leave the cinema unmoved.