It might be hard to imagine that future Oscar-winning filmmakerDanny BoyleofSlumdog Millionairefame would follow up his earlier films exploring the darkest of topics with a movie starring kids that would garner a PG rating. That’s exactly what happened in 2004 whenMillionswas released, taking a look at the impending merger of the United Kingdom into the European Union, with the Euro becoming the country’s new currency. It was a very different turn for Boyle, even if it retained his look at the British working class, teaming him with screenwriterFrank Cotrrell Boyce, fresh off writing24 Hour Party People.
Before makingMillions,Boyle’s films often involved murder, drugs, and, in the case of28 Days Later, the outbreak of a virus that turned those infected into raging, murderous beasts.Millionsmay have seemed like an odd choice for the director who was put on the map withShallow Grave, about a flat tenant who dies leaving a bag of money behind, andTrainspotting,centered around the pervasive drug usage in Scotland.Millionscertainly seemed like a departure from those movies, but it also didn’t quite connect as well with audiences, making it one of Boyle’s biggest flops.
What Is ‘Millions’ About?
In the months before the United Kingdom switches to the Euro as its currency, two brothers, 7-year-old Damian (Alex Etel) and his older brother Anthony, whose mother has died, find a bag filled with Pound notes with no idea where it came from. As it were, the switch to the Euro never actually happened, so this was very much a fictionalized fantasy film with the devout Catholic Damian being obsessed with various saints. Damian decides that, like his heroes,he wants to use the found money to help the poor, so he starts figuring out how to give the money away, much to the consternation of his older brother.
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The boy’s widowed father, Ronnie (James Nesbitt), begins to notice his sons behaving strangely, but he doesn’t realize that they have come across this enormous windfall. Eventually, the bank robber who threw the bag of money off a moving train comes looking forward it, leaving the brothers to have to figure out how to avoid being caught. In some ways, the plot is similar to Boyle’s earlierShallow Grave, although it was handled in a far more kid-friendly way.Damian’s fixation with saints led to the film being filled with magic realism that made it seem even more like a fantasy.
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Millionswas always going to be a tough sell in the States, compared to some of Boyle’s previous movies, including his adaptation ofThe Beach, a novel written by his28 Days Later(and the forthcoming28 Years Later) collaboratorAlex Garland, that starredLeonardo DiCapriofresh off ofTitanic, along withTilda Swinton. By comparison,Millionshad no known stars, but it was also a very British movie, even compared toTrainspotting, since it dealt with things Americans were not particularly concerned with in terms of the Pound being replaced by the Euro. That plot device was actually a piece of fiction and only the surface level of this movie – this wasn’t meant as a serious financial drama alaThe Big Short–because it’s more about this young boy and his desire to help others with the money he finds.
On the other hand, if Boyle didn’t makeMillions, who knows if his foray into Bollywood filmmaking with the Oscar-winningSlumdog Millionairewould have connected so well with audiences, telling a very different tale of a young man in Mumbai, played byDev Patel, who comes across his own financial windfall? Boyle even suggested years after makingMillionsthat itprobably should have been a musicalas well. “It’s finding the right vehicle for where people can burst into song, and we had one,” he said on a 2013 radio show. “Millionswas the vehicle, and we didn’t have the confidence at that time to push it through. If we were approachingMillionsnow, I’d definitely do it as a musical. It’s the perfect vehicle for singing. There’d be no strangeness about it, you’d just accept it.”
Millionsis a wonderful family-friendly film that offers further proof of Boyle being a master filmmaker and storyteller. It’s also impressive how well he was able to transition into working with younger child actors, getting such a terrific performance out of first-timer Alex Etel, who is now 30 years old and has a son of his own, having not acted in nearly 15 years. Still,it seems like the perfect way to get younger moviegoers into the work of Danny Boyle until they’re old enough to watch the filmmaker’s edgier fare.
