Danny Boyle’s rags-to-riches story about an 18-year-old orphan from the slums of Bombay is a closing-night gala that makes the heart pound. Jamal is just one correct answer away from winning – or losing – a staggering 20 million rupees on India’s Who Wants to be a Millionaire? We sit back and tremble. Jamal looks like a rabbit caught in the headlamps of an articulated lorry. The patronising host of the show, Anil Kapoor, can barely hide his disbelief.

When the programme breaks for the night before the final question, Jamal is bundled out of the back door of the studio, whisked to the police station and beaten to a pulp by officers who want to know how he cheated. “What the hell can a slum boy possibly know?” barks the local police chief, Irrfan Khan, as an overfed minion clips a pair of electric cables to Jamal’s big toes. “The answers,” spits out Dev Patel’s bruised but unbeaten hero. The plucky survivor reveals how each nerdy question asked by the slimy host of Millionaire unlocks a seminal childhood memory.

This being a Danny Boyle film, the precious answers involve frantic sprints through Bombay’s chocker back-streets, and grisly flashbacks to the Juhu slum where a nine-year-old Jamal and his slightly older brother, Salim, spend most of their childhood running from sinister pimps and hungry gangs.

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BACKGROUND

• A journey from the gutters to the stars

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BACKGROUND

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The fairytale power of the film is in watching a city evolve through the eyes of a child. The shocks unfold like dreams: the death of Jamal’s mother, casually murdered in a riot; the excitement of meeting a Bollywood star; the ghastly wounds inflicted on children by the local Fagins to make them better beggars; and the mournful smiles of Freida Pinto’s shapely prostitute, Latika, the love of Jamal’s life.

The fact that these memories stack up so neatly is a forgiveable sin. Indeed, Slumdog Millionaire is guilty of all sorts of implausible twist, notably the preposterous saintly romance between Patel and Pinto, which doesn’t chime on any level. But the performances from the young cast and cheesy villains (notably Kapoor’s marvellously condescending television host) are terrific.

The melodrama is magnificently painted. Anthony Dod Mantle’s lush shots of rubbish heaps, cluttered alleyways and skeletal cement tower blocks are framed to perfection. Boyle manages to give Simon Beaufoy’s script a terrific Bollywood twang. For all the bleak ingredients, this is not a remotely miserable film. There’s a comic poetry about it that feels totally in tune with its Indian setting. A festival finale that puts a spring in your step and brings a tear to the eye.

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