Millions
Four Stars
by Norman Wilner, Zap2it.com
Danny Boyle has taken his share of risks in his career, but with "Millions," the director of "Trainspotting" and "28 Days Later" makes his most radical departure yet ... and comes up with one of the year's best movies.
The story of two young brothers who discover a bag filled with a small fortune in pound notes just days before Britain converts to the Euro, "Millions" is a brightly colored, deeply emotional film about true innocence, an energetic and intelligent story aimed squarely at grown-ups who can remember what childhood was really like.
Boyle -- who, with cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, seems incapable of framing an uninteresting shot -- builds a rollicking funhouse of wonders around our eight-year-old narrator, Damien (Alexander Nathan Etel), who's so open to the world around him that he's able to converse with Catholic saints, much to the frustration of his older brother Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon), who'd be having a rougher time dealing with the recent death of their mother even without Damien's tales of heavenly messengers.
When that bag of cash drops out of the sky, Damien decides it's a gift from the heavens, and sets off to do as much good with it as he can. (Anthony has other ideas, like buying himself a posse of friends at his new school.) In this middle movement, Frank Cottrell Boyce's unpredictable script hits its stride, exploring the chasm between a child's concept of charity and goodness, and the grown-up version.
Eventually, their distracted father (James Nesbitt) finds out about the boys' windfall, but even here the movie stays on its feet, managing to be unpredictable and inventive while remaining absolutely true to the emotional complexities of the characters.
The story stumbles just the tiniest of bits at the very end, but that's no reason to deprive yourself. "Millions" is the work of a born filmmaker at the top of his game, inviting us to spend a little time in his wonderful world. Bring it home and settle in.
Fox's enhanced-widescreen DVD supports the film with an audio commentary by Boyle and Boyce, more than half an hour of deleted scenes, and four very short production featurettes. There's also an odd little thing called a "DVD Cutdown," which condenses the movie into a rather incoherent four-minute video. It appears to have been produced for the British DVD, but exactly what it's supposed to accomplish is anybody's guess.
