Millions
dir. Danny Boyle
2004

Danny Boyle sky-rocketed to the top of my favorite director list back in 1996 after I watched Shallow Grave on video followed by Trainspotting in the theater. He then fell out of favor with me (and critics and fans) with A Life Less Ordinary and The Beach. I mean I don't think they're nearly as bad as other people say, but they didn't have the brilliance of his first two features.

Boyle staged a comeback with 28 Days Later, which I can honestly say is far and away the best zombie movie I've seen, but I was never really a fan of the genre and I have yet to see the supposedly brilliant Shaun of the Dead.

It seems a bit strange to me that I'd finally rediscover that special spark I'd loved so much in Shallow Grave and Trainspotting in Boyle's latest effort, Millions, which is a complete departure from his previous work. It's the first film of his that I've seen that is devoid of violence, though there still remains the threat of violence from a "bad guy" character.

I agree with Boyle, as he said in the Q&A following the screening, that there is a strong "emotional core" to all of his films, but the thing that makes Millions so powerful is that emotions are much more innocent and heart-warming. Most of his films are about primitive instincts like greed and fear, and while these are explored in Millions, they are peripheral to a genuine yearning to do what is pure and good.

In many ways Millions parallels Shallow Grave with a "bag of money"* at the center of the drama that sometimes takes us into creepy attics. I see Millions as a retelling of Shallow Grave that explores what happens when the windfall lands on a more innocent bearer. Between the two films, Boyle seems to suggest that money corrupts, but only if you let greed take seed in your heart. There is hope for the capitalist if he remains a humanist.

[watched with Katherina Frank and Evander Reeves at Melnitz]

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* There's even a bag of money in Trainspotting.