This movie shows how badly the poor people in the third world country live and how much they want to get rich and become a millionaire. Especially, when a boy is willing to jump into a poop hole and had himself covered in poops in order to get an autograph of his idol. Sad but a reality nevertheless. Coupled with the pure, innocent, love story between a boy and his girl and the brotherly love despite constant conflicts, the movie managed to bring out all the human natures and put them in close examination. No wonder it was widely acclaimed. Bollywood is not far behind Hollywood now. Everyone wants to have the American dream – very badly as the movie showed. A brief summary is shown below (stop here if you haven’t watched the movie and don’t want me to ruin the ending for you):

One young man, Jamal Malik, was on his way to winning the biggest prize, 20 millions rupees, of “Who wants to be a millionaire” in India. In the middle of the program he was put in jail for being a fraud as he came from a slum and little educated. No way a person like that, according to the detectives and the host, could reach the next-to-last question in a popular game show in India and US. During the interrogation, he reflected on how he escaped from the slum with his brother when one day his Mom was killed during a religious riot many years ago when he was barely 7 years old. Jamal invited an abandoned, little girl, Latika, to join them despite his elder brother’s objection. The three musketeers were then formed. At some point, they were tricked into joining a gypsy-like group to beg money on the street. In return, they were fed and sheltered. His brother, Salim, turned into a helper of the operation. When Salim saw that some of boys had their eyes poked out after passing a singing contest, in order to solicit more sympathy from the passerby. He tipped his brother into running away from the group. In the escape process, he had to abandon Latika while running away from the bad guys. As they grew up, they managed to survive by selling things in the train and even faked being a tour guide in the Taj Mahal.

Jamal never forgot his first love, Latika. So he convinced his brother to go back to find her, who now became a beautiful teenager learning dancing and was ready to put into prostitution. During the rescue process, Salim shot the bad guy and ran to an abandoned hotel. From here on, Salim got recruited to join a bigger mob and slowly grew up to become to executioner of the mob. At this time, the two brother broke up from each other when Salim decided to have his way with Latika.

Eventually, Jamal found Latika working/serving the big mobster.He devised the plan to run away together but the scheme was broken up by his brother, who took the girl back to the mobster. Jamal decided to join the “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” game show in order to find Latika, since she was into the show, like many other Indians at that time.

At the end, Salim gave in to his brother when he saw him on TV and helped the girl escape the mob and got himself killed, covered in money in the tub – earning his millions in his own ironic way. So the girl joined the 20-millionaire and lived happy after – a classic Indian movie ending and laughably with all the signing and dancing in the train station.

A semi-retarded man, Karl, got out of the mental hospital because he killed with a sling blade his mom and his mom’s lover, mistaking the heat of their loving making for causing injury to his mom. He found a job at a local lawn-mower repair shop and befriended a 9-year-old boy, who lived with his Mom and the memory of his Dad who committed suicides years prior. Unfortunately, his lonely Mom got hooked up with this violent boyfriend who bestowed terror on the family and Karl, who now lived in their garage.

As a way to for Karl to get the family out of the grip of the boyfriend’s violent streak, he decided one day after being kicked out of the garage to do something about it. He walked in the family house and chopped in half the head of the boyfriend with a lawnmower blade.

I’m not sure if this final action is called for as there are ways to get rid of the bad boyfriend. In those days before the enactment of the tougher domestic violence laws nowadays, it’s probably hard to find an alternative except getting out of the small town once and for all. Of course, for Karl, in his simplistic mind, that was the only way out of the complicated world. He did manage to confront his drunken father and got some of the issues out in the open, including his father’s killing/burying alive of his baby brother.

Billy Bob Thornton’s acting as Karl was fantastic and very believable – better than Dustin Hoffman in the Rain Man. His way of talking in the movie sounded like Yoda in his own simplistic and innocent way. It’s probably hard to understand without the subtitles. John Ritter also acted as a gay, sincere, and helpful friend to the family. The boy performed quite well in his helpless and yet brave role.

Overall, this was a story of several tragedies but heart warming to see how the participants helped one another to cope with them within their circumstances.