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MILLIONS
6/10
UK
(UK-US) 2004 : Danny BOYLE : 97 mins
Though set
during the run-up to Christmas, Danny Boyle's Millions takes place
in a Britain so sunny and temperate-looking you wonder whether the action
is taking place after the climate has been radically altered by global
warming. In fact, the time-frame (though unspecified) is in one way decidedly
futuristic: in Frank Cottrell Boyce's script, the UK is about to finally
ditch the pound and join the Euro, at the time of writing such an unlikely
prospect that any fictional treatment of same should surely involve teleportation,
robots and holidays in space.
No matter
- this is only the first of several leaps of faith required by a picture
whose fairytale-ish atmosphere is the polar opposite from Boyle's previous
feature, the gore-soaked quasi-zombie hit 28
Days Later. Nine-year-old Anthony Cunningham (Lewis McGibbon)
and his seven-year-old brother Damian have just moved into a newly-built
house with his father Ronnie (James Nesbitt) when Damian stumbles across
a bag containing £229,000.
What we know,
and Damian doesn't, is that the money is on its way to be incinerated
as part of the currency change-over, and that it's part of the booty in
an elaborate heist planned by unseen villains. One of whom (Christopher
Fulford) soon turns up searching for the missing cash. By this stage Anthony
and Damian have expressed differing positions about what their next move
should be: materialistic Anthony is all for blowing it on pricey luxuries;
the more pious Damian - who regularly "chats" with the saints
- wants to donate it to good causes. Adding a further complication is
the arrival on the scene of Dorothy (Daisy Donovan), a charity fund-raiser
who ignites passions dormant in Ronnie since the death of his wife (Jane
Hogarth).
Millions
soon establishes a bouncy, engaging, amiable atmosphere, just the
right side of cute and deploying some nimble CGI effects - there's a house-building
sequence early on that trumps anything in Witness, while the beguilingly
low-key appearances of the various saints sees each of them haloed by
a smoky nimbus: "Martyrs of Uganda, 1881!" exclaims the hagio-savvy
Damian. This is, of course, fundamentally a kiddies' morality tale building
up to the not-so-shocking revelation that "the money just makes everything
worse" - compare and contrast this with the refreshingly amoral conclusion
of Finnish variant Pearls
and Pigs, if you get the chance.
Though not
exactly the most fluent young actors in the world (viz. the kids in Shane
Meadows' pictures) young McGibbon and, especially, Etel, make for
a winning twosome and Nesbitt wisely underplays in what's largely an in-the-sidelines
role. The energy level does dip somewhat around the half-way stage, when
the Bad Guy's thrillerish appearances suddenly drag us towards the dreaded
territory of the Children's Film Foundation, but Boyle and Boyce get things
back on track with the finale - quite literally so, as a railway line
is the setting for the climax in which the late Mrs Cunningham makes a
brief, moving "appearance". And that's not all - impish cinematographer
Anthony Dod Mantle may be having a little fun
with the way
he films a child standing in front of a fire that's burning between the
railway tracks, an almost exact visual quotation from the end of Michael
Haneke's Time
of the Wolf. Boyle's upbeat, infectious optimism couldn't be much
further removed from Haneke's apocalyptic dourness, of course - Millions
is a proper all-ages crowd-pleaser which will no doubt become a TV
Christmas fixture for many years to come - who knows, it might even be
still on when Britain finally does get round to taking the Euro-plunge.
But don't put any money on it.
26th October,
2004
[seen 8th October : Odeon, Nuneaton : press show - CinemaDays
event]
by Neil
Young
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