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One of several torture scenes in Slumdog Millionaire.

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Not lapping up Slumdog

Slumdog Millionaire: The most violent film in Oscar history?

By Susan G. Cole

I know I can't stop the juggernaut – I'm guessing Oscar will come calling on Slumdog Millionaire this Sunday – but count me among those moviegoers who just doesn't get it.

Let's put aside all the controversies to discuss the film itself.

For me, this movie kept hitting the same note over and over again and, given its content, it was more violent that it had to be. There's not even that much tension there – really, is there any doubt how this one's going to end?

Let me start by talking about Slumdog's pace and its texture. The breakneck speed just never lets up – Jamal is running, fighting or yelling almost throughout the whole damn thing. Cutting back for 30 seconds to the Who Wants To Be A Millionaire TV show every once in a while, where Jamal's taking his time choosing A,B,C or D, does not have the effect of changing the rhythm. It does the opposite, creating a predictable pattern – quiet for two minutes, then all hell breaking loose for the 25 minutes following.

When it comes to texture, Slumdog has none.

If you haven't seen it yet, don't be fooled by the happy-go-lucky trailers and ads focussing on the film's crowdpleasing elements and its evocation of triumph of the human spirit – even showing the Bollywood-style dance sequence in the train station is a bit of a cheat, since it's not even part of the movie but the background to the final credits. The reality is that Slumdog is way more violent necessary.

We're not two minutes into it when we get the grisly scene featuring our hero being tortured via electrocution.

Jamal leaping into the outhouse's shithole until he's over his head in crap is a bit much, too.

Predators blinding young children with acid? Come on.

The only non-gratuitously violent scene comes via the attack on Jamal's community from opposing religious forces. Beyond that, the violence factor is way over the top.

Should Slumdog take the best picture Oscar, it will be the most violent film to do so ever. And I include the two Godfather movies and The French Connection when I write that.

The Godfather films were themselves meditations on violence in America, using the Mafia as metaphor. Watch those movies again and there isn't really anything in them as sickening as some of Slumdog's sequences – i mean really, even the famous horse in The Godfather is decapitated offscreen. The French Connection is another film about crime, so I'm prepared to take the violence that goes along with it.

And it's still not as consistently violent as this year's Oscar frontrunner.

Danny Boyle's little movie that could is many things – energetic, evocative and well acted. But the trailers lie. They call it "a soaring, crowdpleasing fantasy" – one of the reasons I knew how it was going to end – and "a buoyant hymn to life." It may be those things in theory – that is, pitched as a story to a Hollywood producer – but in reality, watching Slumdog Millionaire is a totally gruelling experience.

Susan G. Cole responds to the commenters here.

Feb 19, 2009 at 12:49 AM

Go to NOW Daily

Comments

Posted by David Topping on 02/19/2009, 09:51 AM

"Should Slumdog take the best picture Oscar, it will be the most violent film to do so ever."

Seriously? How about last year's Best Picture winner, No Country for Old Men?

Posted by Justin on 02/19/2009, 10:07 AM

More violent than Braveheart (1995), or Platoon (1986) - no, not really. What about Gladiator (2000)? I don't even know if it would make the top 10 in the 'most violent films to win Best Picture'.

At least the film had something to say, and introduced westerners to the concept of life in the slums of India - a topic which most of them knew nothing at all about and had never given much thought to.

I mean out of the whole experience that's what you got? That it was violent? How terribly sad for you.

Posted by David on 02/19/2009, 10:11 AM

(Or the Departed, or Gladiator, or Schindler's List, or Silence of the Lambs, or, holy crap, Braveheart...)

But! I do agree about the structural predictability--it's one of the biggest reasons I didn't like Slumdog Millionaire as much as I really wanted to. Violence, though? Not really that bad. I didn't know that falling into shit was worse than wearing a coat made out of women or genocide.

Posted by anonymous on 02/19/2009, 10:59 AM

So pretty much every movie Cole reviews badly, i'm going to go see. I've had it with this bs. Get a real movie reviewer and i just might come back to this piece of crap website.

Posted by Kal on 02/19/2009, 09:57 PM

Interesting that the fictional violence from The Godfather and French Connection seem to be acceptable but then a foreign film that exaggerates real violence is suddenly distasteful. Ethnocentric much?

Posted by Goon on 02/20/2009, 12:51 AM

Everything Cole writes is so far off its not funny. She's NOW's answer to Scott Holloren at boxofficemojo. Matching up to his cluelessness is very hard, but damned if Sue doesn't try.

The Departed. No Country for Old Men. Schindler's List. Braveheart. Unforgiven. Silence of the Lambs. Platoon.

NOW lucked out greatly by losing Tim Perlich this week. It's time to get rid of Cole too. If she can't even do enough research to know who won best picture over the last several years, she shouldn't be writing a single thing. It makes NOW look extremely amateur.

Posted by Goon on 02/20/2009, 12:57 AM

I'm sending this link to friends. I don't think they'd believe someone who regularly writes about movies could be this far off.

Posted by Andrew James on 02/20/2009, 10:45 AM

While I agree that Slumdog isn't exactly the uppity, feel-good movie throughout, your assertion that it is the most violent film to ever win an Oscar (should it do so) is unbelievably preposterous.

The comment above by Goon pretty much says it all. There is ten times more blood splatters and killings in the past 20 years in several of the films that won best picture.

Posted by erik s. on 02/23/2009, 10:57 AM

HILARIOUS. That this woman is NOW's "Senior Entertainment Editor" is staggering.

I guess NOW has been his hard by the recession, and has taken to hiring based on how low the person bids for their salary. "So, Ms. Cole, what were your salary expectations as an editor at NOW?" "Ummm.... $12/hr?" "HIRED!"

Posted by brownsound on 02/23/2009, 11:04 AM

"Predators blinding young children with acid? Come on."

Believe this stuff doesn't happen if that makes you feel better. The truth is it does. Deal with it.

Posted by KG on 02/23/2009, 11:59 AM

I'm not sure why someone who doesn't appear to enjoy movies is one of this paper's movie critics.

Posted by Martin on 02/23/2009, 03:03 PM

How is Cole the Senior Entertainment Editor? She's (very) obviously not very film literate, considering her comments above.

I would also say from her rather ethnocentric comments she hasn't traveled outside of the wonderfully soft world of North America either.

Posted by Martin on 02/23/2009, 03:06 PM

How is Cole the Senior Entertainment Editor? She's (very) obviously not very film literate, considering her comments above.

I would also say from her rather ethnocentric comments she hasn't traveled outside of the wonderfully soft world of North America either.

Posted by Cam on 02/23/2009, 03:55 PM

Susan G. Cole, the most violent writer at NOW.

Posted by Goon on 02/23/2009, 04:38 PM

^ HA

Yeah, Slumdog is about as violent as Susan Cole is insightful. Which is to say, once in a while, but nowhere near worth getting excited about.

She couldn't keep up on the podcast either.

Posted by Debin on 02/24/2009, 02:17 AM

Slumdog was a piece of crap moviemaking that relied on gimmicks and over-the-top Bollywood sentimentality to sell itself to a witless liberal audience. Go see the films of Satyajit Ray if you want to something worthwhile.

Posted by Hugh on 02/26/2009, 07:27 AM

Slumdog was over-rated crap. Why even entertain the idea that the film could be the most violent? Why give it anymore props? It wasn't violent at all to me.

And it sucked. The main lead was not a real portrayal at all. How does some British-sounding geeky guy get accussed of being unable to answer such questions? I would have trusted a boy with his demeanor to be my doctor.

The movie is bogus. No offence, this is a movie for naive political-correct liberal elitists who know no better.

Posted by Goon on 02/26/2009, 04:25 PM

^ "no offense, this is a movie for naive political-correct liberal elitists"

Nice one, so if anyone takes offense for your baiting you get so say "I said no offense"

Ass.

What does Slumdog have to do with liberalism or elitism anyways? Oh thats right, nothing.

Posted by Thomas on 02/28/2009, 06:00 PM

Ms. Cole:

I'm wondering did you and I see the same movie. You keep harping on the over the top violence but you mention one scene the riot scene. Oddly enough you are both OK with it and fail to mention that it was based on real events which was a series of Hindu led Riots against Muslims in India.

Then you mention that Jamal is always running, fighting, screaming again when did this happen. Yes he and his brother are on the move by necessity as the movie makes clear. Should they stay and get killed like their mother. Or get their eyes burned out.

I don't how to break this to you but in many parts of the world unpleasant and violent things happen to people. Here in Chicago police are accused of routinely torturing people. What happened to Jamal in Slumdog was mild compared to what CPD have been accused of doing to people.

The outhouse scene which seemed to so sicken you reminded me of a scene from "Schindler's List"

In Newsweek a survivor from an Indian Slum described getting an opium addicted midwife to help his mother give birth using a razor to cut the umbilical cord or the beatings he got from his teachers. So Boyle has given us a sanitized version of what it would be like to life in a third world slum.

Posted by G Williams on 03/01/2009, 10:49 PM

"I know I can't stop the juggernaut – I'm guessing Oscar will come calling on Slumdog Millionaire this Sunday – but count me among those moviegoers who just doesn't get it."

While your trying to get yourself over the situation you imagine yourself in with others, how about you get over yourself?

By sheer weight of evidence, there has to be six, seven of you that don't get it?

Should your review actually count for anything, anything at all, it will be one of the most myopic reviews I have read in a while.

I hope the rest of the people you malign by suggesting we may be daft for understanding or heaven forbid, actually enjoying the entertainment, consider the source.

Choose your words and consider their effect more carefully. That would be your job, the whine would be for after its done.

Posted by Thomas on 03/05/2009, 10:45 PM

I was thinking that maybe Now Toronto should have a contest to pick a new Movie Critic.