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Reviews
Salaam Bombay! (1988)
Still moving and fresh in 2006; excellent
The best, most convincing child actors I've seen - and not surprising since they aren't just playing homeless street children in Bombay: they are street children in Bombay. The content is stark, real and very well observed - a world of inescapable poverty, drugs and prostitution - driven by such great performances, strong direction and none of the heavy-handed morals/guilt mixture that some serious-subject films are guilty of, it doesn't leave that artificial-sentiment taste in your mouth; I'm just really impressed. Some of the music sounds a little dated, it was the 80's after all, but there's no point even trying to pick out any such 'faults' because they are irrelevant in the face of the brilliant central performance of Shafiq Syed. Don't not see this Mira Nair debut -you'll be missing out on one important work.