Millions

Directed by Danny Boyle. Starring Alexander Nathan Etel and Lewis Owen McGibbon. Rated PG. Now playing at Cinemark Tinseltown.

Although you wouldn't exactly expect Danny Boyle to follow up Shallow Grave and Trainspotting (let alone A Life Less Ordinary) with a kid's film, those glossy grungefests did have a kind of childlike giddiness mixed in with the sadistic fervour. And Millions, it turns out, is still pretty edgy when compared with Disney and company.

There is some wee-ones-at-risk stuff in this British-made flick, but most of the nerviness is found in form, not content. Boyle is a stylist rarely happy to let a scene play out naturally when he has an opportunity to goose it along with computer effects, camera trickery, and fancy editing. Fortunately, he does that kind of silliness really well, so he's able to sell iffy ideas, like having two kids play within the computer-generated confines of a north-of-England housing project they will be moving into when the real one is done.

That's just for openers, as 10-year-old Anthony (Lewis Owen McGibbon) and dreamier kid brother Damian (Alexander Nathan Etel), who has an unhealthy fixation on the lives of the saints, unpack their gear in the squeaky-clean suburbs. Damian is playing by the railroad tracks that skirt his new subdivision, and he believes it's a gift from God when a bag of money suddenly descends from heaven (actually the 9:14 to Liverpool). The freckle-faced boy figures this is his chance to help the poor, although Anthony, who has a definite knack for numbers, thinks it would be better to buy a flat or two while the market is down ("for investment, like"). For some reason, though, the local estate agent doesn't seem keen on taking cash from kiddies.

The boys have other problems. Not only have they let virtually everyone in on their little secret, except their long-suffering single dad (Bloody Sunday's excellent James Nesbitt) but both cops and robbers are after the money they've been so quickly spending. And, in the formulation devised by screenwriter Frank Cottrell Boyce, who wrote the similarly frantic (but much less family-friendly) 24 Hour Party People, the UK is just about to trade in its pounds sterling for Euros, so the dough will be worthless in just a few days. And who's that new woman Dad has taken a fancy to, anyway?

As things heat up, Damian is increasingly visited by visions of his favourite saints-at least his omens are mostly positive-and the film occasionally lumbers toward cuteness. Boyle also appears to be quoting himself at times, as when a mildly scary sequence borrows from Shallow Grave's what's-in-the-attic vocabulary. But for all the visual trickery and quasi-religiosity (apparently, you can smoke in heaven), the movie mostly concentrates on the genuine innocence of childhood and those points of commerce and coercion where it can be either lost or turned into something good for the greater world. And, when you think about it, that's a pretty special effect.

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