Millions

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Millions
Millions DVD cover
Directed by	Danny Boyle
Written by	Frank Cottrell Boyce
Starring	Alexander Nathan Etel Lewis Owen McGibbon
Release date(s)	September 14, 2004 (Toronto Film Festival)
Running time	98 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Millions is a 2004 film and book written by Frank Cottrell Boyce. It was originally written solely as a screenplay, but Cottrell Boyce then decided to adapt it into a novel while the film was in the process of being made. The book was awarded the Carnegie Medal, and formed an integral part of the annual Liverpool Reads campaign in Cottrell Boyce's home city. The film version was directed by Danny Boyle, and stars Alexander Etel, Lewis McGibbon, and James Nesbitt.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Millions tells the story of 7-year-old Damian whose family moves to the suburbs of Manchester after the death of his mother. Soon after the move, Damian's playhouse is obliterated by a bag of money flung from a passing train. Damian immediately shows the money to his brother, Anthony, and the two begin thinking of what to do with it.

Damian, the kind-hearted and religious of the two, had recently overheard three Latter Day Saint missionaries lecture other members of the community on building foundations of rock rather than foundations of sand, an old Christian principle which dictates that self-worth should be based on spirituality rather than worldly things like money and wealth. The lecture inspires Damian, who is particularly enamored with the missionaries because of the name of their church (Damian is obsessed with Saints, studying about them all the time and even seeing them in his day-to-day activities as hallucinations), and he immediately begins looking for ways to give his share of the money to the poor. At one point, he even gives a bundle of cash to the missionaries themselves, hearing about their modest lifestyle (the result of religious dedication) and deciding that they too must be poor.

Throughout the course of the story, Damian does little acts of kindness like buying birds from pet stores and setting them free and taking beggars to Pizza Hut, while Anthony bribes other kids at school into being his transportation and bodyguards, and looks into investing the money in real estate.

The story takes place within a week of the change from the pound to the Euro, and an assembly is held at Damian's school to inform the children about the change, as well as to educate the children about helping the poor. Damian learns that the money, which is in pounds, will not be any good after the "E-Day" (the day that the EU Euro would take over as the official legal tender), and he and his brother cannot open a bank account (which would change the money for them upon its deposit) without their parents' signature, and their father does not know about the money. Damian, realising that the money will be no good after a few days, decides that the best thing to do would be to give it all to the poor before the conversion. Upon deciding this, he drops 1000 pounds into the donation can at the assembly, for which he and Anthony get in trouble.

After the donation, Anthony's friend informs them that a train carrying bills which were to be destroyed after the conversion had been robbed and that the money had been dispersed by throwing it off of the train at various locations to be collected by the robbers, who were positioned throughout the country. The boys logically conclude that their money was stolen, and Damian, who thought the money was from God, feels terrible.

Around this time, a mysterious man comes snooping around the train tracks and asks Damian if he has any money. Damian thinks that the man is a beggar and tells him he has 'loads of money'. However, Anthony finds out and comes back to give the man a jar full of coins to cover Damian's tracks.

The robber eventually finds out where Damian lives and ransacks his house to find the money. Damian had informed his father about the money just before they came home to their destroyed house. Damian's father, who had resolved to give the money back, decided that if the robbers were going to steal his family's Christmas, then he would steal the robbers' money. The family, as well as the father's new girlfriend, go on a massive shopping spree on Christmas Eve.

That night, after they are asleep, their house is bombarded by beggars and charities begging for contributions, and seeing the confusion that results, Damian runs off to the train tracks to burn the money, deciding that it was doing more harm than good. While he is burning the money, he is visited by his dead mother (which is not out of the ordinary in the scope of the story; Damian is visited by numerous dead saints throughout the story, a phenomenon which is never explained as either hallucinatory or genuine, rather is a light-hearted device used to show Damian's purity) who tells him not to worry about her. She also tells him that he was her miracle, which is significant because in Catholicism, performing a miracle is a requirement for becoming a saint.

The movie is a commentary on the horrendous issue of world poverty; particularly in Africa; as well as the spiritual poverty of affluence. In the final scene we see Damian's dream of the family flying a rocket ship to Africa and helping develop water wells, which earlier in the movie is shown to be the most crucial and cheapest way to drastically improve the quality of life for many African communities.

As the tagline asks, 'Is anyone good?', this film poses the age old question of what one would do if they suddenly received a large windfall. Damian, after trying to help people with it, chooses to burn it because he realises that the money has caused all sorts of problems, and most importantly that it was stolen in the first place and that it would be wrong to keep it for personal gain.