'Millions' Review: Danny Boyle's Family Film

Sweet and saintly, Frank Cottrell Boyce's original script is a pure expression of childish joy.

Now Streaming: Nine years old and intimately acquainted with all kinds of saints, Damian (Alex Etel) moves with his older brother Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon) and their father (James Nesbitt) into a newly-built neighborhood. 

Their new home is lovely, and spacious enough that each brother gets their own room for the first time, but the community is sparsely-populated, and Damian finds greater kinship with the imaginary company of Catholic saints who keep appearing to him than with any human. Coupled with his keenly-felt grief over the death of his mother, the lad feels quite lonely. 

One day, a big sack of money arrives, flying through the air and destroying the cardboard house he's assembled by the railroad track that runs through their neighborhood. Damian thinks it's a gift from heaven and sets about distributing it to the poor. 

At least, that's his initial intention, which keeps getting sidetracked by Anthony and everyone else who gets a whiff of the hundreds thousands millions of pounds -- the exact amount doesn't matter, it's a lot -- in the big sack. England will soon be converting to the Euro, and pounds in cash will be worthless, which adds a welcome degree of urgency to the entire affair.

As laid out in the charming original screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce, Damian is a pure child: sweet, innocent, guileless, and wide-eyed, he's always smiling and always thinking of others before himself. His dead mother is constantly on his mind; he asks every saint who appears to him about her -- have you seen her yet? -- and he has not yet been corrupted by the world. 

Older brother Anthony may not have been thoroughly corrupted by the world, but he's a few years old and far more worldly-wise than the well-meaning Damian, who is ripe to be ripped off by the world and all its less savory citizens. Their father is always working and never around, it seems, so it's up to Anthony to look out for Damian. But he can't follow him everywhere, and so Damian keeps trying to give the money away, as he uses his limited knowledge of the world to give money to people he thinks are "poor" and probably deserving of a little cash. 

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I first saw the movie on videotape around the time of its initial release in the U.S. in April 2005, though I remember it was either under consideration or actually screened at AFI Fest in 2004, during my two-year stint as a festival screener there. It lodged in my mind as an enjoyable film, though at the time I had not yet seen all of Danny Boyle's films up to that point, which included Shallow Grave (1994), Trainspotting (1995), A Life Less Ordinary (1999), and The Beach (2000). \

Indeed, Boyle's previous film was 28 Days Later (2002), which is being revived this week with the release of his sequel 28 Years Later. Boyle's next film after Millions was the decidedly-for-adults Sunshine (2007), and he's continued in the 'decidedly-for-adults' vein with nearly every film thereafter, with the exception of the soft-tempered Only Yesterday (2019). 

His films are not always jammed with piercing violence, horrific violence, zombie violence, and arm-separating violence, of course; it's just that he has invariably been drawn to adult themes handled without compromise. Even Millions takes a brief, dark turn in its third act, and it surprised me -- as it was undoubtedly meant to do -- because it felt genuinely scary and made me fear for the character in danger, especially after the bulk of the film is told as a lighthearted saint-minded fable.

Millions may be an anomaly in Boyle's career, but you wouldn't know it from watching the film today. It's made with care, precision, and Boyle's usual upending of narrative conventions, in part through his constantly varied choice of perspectives and framing, which keeps the manner of storytelling from ever diving into tried and true 'family film' waters. 

As a consequence, Millions feels unlike nearly every other family film of its time. It's sweet and inviting. Damian is such a wonderful kid that you can't help but root for him and worry about him and his family. As things turned out, neither Alex Etel nor Lewis Owen McGibbon continued acting for very long, which means that Millions remains a repository for two extraordinary performances by young actors who are entirely endearing and feel authentically juvenile. 

James Nesbitt remains active, giving lovely, measured performances, mostly in British television shows for the past decade. Boyce and Boyle remain active, with their last collaboration coming at the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony. 

Those who love horror and zombies will undoubtedly be eager to hear about 28 Years Later, which is press screening locally tonight ahead of its world premiere in London tomorrow and its wide theatrical release on Friday. For the rest of us, we'll always have Millions. [Disney Plus]