Millions
Short description
After their mother's death, nine-year-old Anthony and his seven-year-old brother Damian move with their grieving father Ronnie into a new house beside a railway line. Damian, deeply religious, retreats into an imaginary world and builds himself a den out of cardboard boxes. A bag stuffed with banknotes, the proceeds of a robbery, lands at his feet. Anthony wants to keep the windfall quiet, but the money is in pounds sterling and Britain is about to switch to the euro, which will render it worthless within a week. The two boys must decide, and disagree, about how to spend it, while the people who lost the cash are looking for it.
Danny Boyle directed the film, the seventh of the seventeen features he has made in chronological order, following 28 Days Later and preceding Sunshine. Frank Cottrell Boyce wrote the screenplay, and the cast includes Alexander Nathan Etel as Damian, Lewis McGibbon as Anthony, James Nesbitt as Ronnie, Daisy Donovan, Christopher Fulford and Enzo Cilenti, among thirty-three credited performers. The production was a European and American co-venture.
Made for about 8 million dollars, Millions took roughly 12 million dollars worldwide. Audiences rate it 6.8 out of 10 on IMDb from around 27,000 votes and 6.4 out of 10 on TMDB from a much smaller number, while a film critics' rating of 7.7 out of 10 from 159 reviews places it clearly higher than either audience measure.
What's left behind the scenes
- The action takes place during the Christmas holidays, but foliage can be seen in some shots, which is only possible in summer. Director Danny Boyle explains this in the DVD commentary, saying that it looks more like Umbria in central Italy than Manchester.
- Instead of ordering t-shirts with the logo for the busy actors and crew members, it was decided to donate the money to "Water Aid" (an international non-governmental organization dealing with water supply, sanitation and hygiene) to build a well in Africa.
- Damian's favorite book is "Six O'Clock Saints" by Joan Olivia Wyndham (1921-2007). It was popular in Britain in the 1950s, and it's surprising that someone's parents would now give such a book to their child, as screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce points out in the DVD commentary, because it contains frightening stories that Damian tells at school, and many others. This book is a reference to Martin Scorsese, who, according to Boyce, called it his favorite book in an interview.
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