"A Bollywood Story Without Bollywood's Conventions"

by Chris Bodenner
Alvaro Vargas Llosa reviews "Slumdog Millionaire" (already getting Oscar buzz):

Latin American soap operas and oldish Indian melodramas have many things in common. One of them is a fascination with victimhood and a redistributionist idea of wealth.... By contrast, the hero of "Slumdog Millionaire" never complains, never suggests that others owe him something, never envies what he sees. And he is relentless in his determination to go on, and on. Every little victory--and the final prize, which is not the money--is the result of ingenuity meeting opportunity.

Unlike so many tales of the developing world in which a character's identity is often expressed through groups--social, political, religious--that find themselves at the losing end of society, this one reminds us ... that every identity is profoundly individual and that destiny is what you aim for, not what you wait for.