Review: Millions

IMDB Info

British cult-film director Danny Boyle made a PG-rated film just as imaginative as Hitchhiker’s Guide, but far more practical. Entitled Millions, its protagonist, Damian (a terrific Alex Etel), is a seven-year-old imaginative idealist. His mother has died and he, his father (James Nesbitt), and his brother (Lewis McGibbon) decide to move into a new house. One day, after they settle in, Damian finds himself playing inside a big, empty brown-box in an open field nearby. There, he crosses paths with a bag that flies of a train traveling on the tracks bordering the field. It contains 265,000 Pounds. Damian believes it to be a gift from God which he must use to better the world. His brother, the only other person he tells of the money, thinks that they should use it for their own personal gain. Either way, keeping the money brings many complications. For one, “E-Day” is one week away, in which the official currency of Great Britain will change to Euros. All Pounds must be converted before then or they will be, as the corrupt-general put it in last year’s Hotel Rwanda, “only good for wiping your ass with.” And if that’s a problem for Damian, then the fact that the robber—who stole the money and dropped it in the field thinking that no one would notice it before he came by later to pick it up—is willing to do almost anything to get it back, is a catastrophe. To help him with his many dilemmas, Damian looks to the Saints, who he knows much about and believes he can communicate with, throughout the film.

Millions fails to wrap up some threads of its central story by its ending, particularly the one involving the robber, but plotting is not the point of the exercise. The movie is all about the way the story is told, as Boyle is so wonderfully imaginative, both visually and emotionally. Damian’s inner-dilemma is one of stunning complexity; its deeply human side is highlighted by the movie’s vividly enchanting command of its thematic depiction of innocence. Like 1971’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Millions is always comforting and uplifting, but never ignores the realities of life, offering a true and down-to-earth version of fantasy. It’s the little subtleties that make the movie; critic Jack Moore was of the exact same thinking as me when he points out a beautiful scene in his review. “…I remember the moment when Damian walks into his father's room late one night, mumbling that he's not used to having his own room. He is lonely. Dad obliges and rolls over, removing the two pillows he was embracing on his wife's side of the bed. Damian doesn't say a word, and he doesn't need to,” Moore writes. It’s scenes like that which craft Millions, gently, simply, and touchingly. By the time the end rolls around, it doesn’t much matter that everything isn’t wrapped up perfectly; the picture’s natural charm has already won the audience over.