[Deckard]

Saw this last night.

Superby directed by Boyle, as expected.

Superb soundtrack, very appropriate, again, as expected.

Thought the child actors were incredibly talented - more impressed by the youngest Jamal than Dev Patel's performance, though on reflection, Patel had surprisingly little to work with.

Anil Kapoor was amusing but at times a bit too villainous to be credible.

The temptation to sink to stereotype and distortion is inevitable for this kind of story (kind of Scorsese meets Capra) but it wasn't too bad in that department. I've had to sit through no shortage of bad Bollywood films over the last 10 years which stereotype and distort themselves to a much greater degree.

Nice that the main lead was from a Muslim background, yet this fact was largely incidental to the film as a whole. A lesser writer would have shoe-horned terrorism into the story of poverty.

I recommend it. And very glad this beat Milk, which I thought was a mess.