Slumdog Millionaire (2008, UK/USA)

Danny Bolye’s Slumdog Millionaire may have a Bollywood-esque plot, with all of the twists and turns to be expected of Indian melodrama, but it’s still essentially a Western film at heart. Slumdog doesn’t luxuriate in its inherent ridiculousness, it slams through each moment with the help of Boyle’s shotgun editing and numerous montage sequences. Perhaps it’s this sense of speed that lost the film its impact on me – when we got to the end, it didn’t feel like the triumph that it should have been. It doesn’t help that the first half is much stronger than the second, with an excellent cast of child actors making their way through some of the most dismal circumstances imaginable (though in the most gorgeous manner – Boyle seems to fetishize the colors and textures of the slums). Once the action moves into the present and relies more heavily on the game show framing device, the movie loses steam, just as it should be ramping up. Slumdog is probably one of the most mature films of Boyle’s career, but it just lacked the emotional wallop I was expecting – needing – at the end.