Danny Boyle is a singular director, whose work spans a range of genres: drama (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting), sci-fi (28 Days Later, Sunshine), musical (Yesterday), biopic (127 Hours, Steve Jobs), and thriller (Trance). He's also directed live performances and several stage productions, including the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony. Most recently, he helmed a dance adaptation of The Matrix. Really.
Boyle's diverse body of work reflects the variety of influences that have shaped him. Over the years, he has talked about the movies that inspired him most, from classics like Apocalypse Now ("It eviscerated my brain, completely") to foreign cinema and more obscure films like Nicolas Roeg's Eureka. Boyle's fans should find some gems among his recommendations.
'Deewaar' (1975)
Boyle is a big fan of Bollywood movies. Indeed, Slumdog Millionaire was heavily influenced by Indian cinema, including this crime drama starring Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan. They play two brothers from the slums of Bombay (present-day Mumbai) who take different paths in life. Ravi joins the police, while Vijay becomes a criminal.
Deewar was influential not just on Bollywood movies but world cinema in general. Bachchan's performance, in particular, was acclaimed. Forbes included it in their list of the 25 all-time best Bollywood performances. Boyle called Deewaar "absolutely key to Indian cinema".
'Eureka' (1983)
Eureka is a drama starring Gene Hackman and directed by Nicolas Roeg, perhaps most famous for the Donald Sutherland-starring horror Don't Look Now. The film follows a gold prospector who strikes it rich. However, his wealth bring him no happiness as he suspects that his daughter (Theresa Russell) and her husband (Rutger Hauer) are trying to exploit him, while a gangster seeks to gain control of his island.
"I love Nick Roeg," Boyle has said. "He’s idiosyncratic, highly individual and yet for a ten-year period he was working in the studio system with big stars." He singled out Eureka as his favorite Roeg film and praised Hackman's work in particular. "People say 'Hackman' and think of The Conversation but he’s never better than he is in Eureka. If you can imagine a man who has everything and he just plays it as a guy who has nothing."
'Black Friday' (2004)
Based on a true story, Black Friday dramatizes the 1993 Bombay bombings, a series of terror attacks that killed over 250 people. It takes place in the days leading up to the attack and follows three figures who plotted and carried out the bombings. Director Anurag Kashyap filmed it in a guerilla style, shooting in real locations without permission, lending the movie a gritty realism.
The leads all give authentic, committed performances, which really bring this dark tale to life. The film also features a terrific 12-minute police chase through a crowded slum, which Boyle imitates in Slumdog Millionaire with a scene where the lead characters run through the city as kids.
'Au revoir les enfants' (1987)
Au revoir les enfants is a period drama set in Nazi-occupied France, directed by Louis Malle. It follows a priest (Raphaël Fejtő) who attempts to keep several Jewish children safe during the War. Boyle listed it among his top five all-time favorite movies.
"It’s one of the most beautiful films I’ve ever seen; one of the saddest, most moving, genuine films ever," Boyle told Rotten Tomatoes. "That’s the best film I’ve ever seen about children." Other Malle films worth checking out include My Dinner with Andre and Damage starring Jeremy Irons.
'Parinda' (1989)
After his friend is murdered, Karan (Anil Kapoor) learns that his brother (Jackie Shroff) is a member of the gang that did it. He sets out to infiltrate the group and take revenge. Parinda (meaning 'bird') is another influential Bollywood crime film about the conflict between two brothers. It would inspire future directors including Nikhil Advani and Anurag Kashyap.
Parinda is kind of like director Vidhu Vinod Chopra's take on Mean Streets. It shares that film's fascination with lost young men and their attraction to violence. Boyle has said that Parinda was one of the movies that helped him understand Mumbai while working on Slumdog Millionaire. Kapoor even appears in Slumdog Millionaire as Prem Kumar, the game show host.
'Don't Breathe' (2016)
Don't Breathe is a horror-thriller from director Fede Álvarez. It follows three thieves who break into a blind man's house. However, the blind man Nordstrom (Stephen Lang) turns out to be far more of a threat than they anticipated. The burglars become trapped in the house while Nordstrom attempts to kill them. Álvarez tells the story with plenty of style, relying more on suspense and characterization than blood and gore. He's helped in this by Lang's powerhouse performance. Lang returned for the film's sequel, released in 2021.
"When you’re a director and you watch movies, sometimes you see a director’s work and you go ‘whoa,’ that guy can really do it, because you sort of understand how films are made,” Boyle said. "Don’t Breathe was one of them. You get that shudder moment of thinking ‘whoah, I should retire'."
'The Battle of the Bulge' (1965)
This epic war film is a fictionalized account of the largest and bloodiest battle fought by the US during WWII. It does an admirable job of trying to compress a month-long offensive that took place across three countries into a single feature-length narrative. Henry Fonda, Telly Savalas, and Charles Bronson also put in solid performances.
Boyle has said that he first became interested in film when he saw Battle of the Bulge at around 7 years old. "That’s the first I’d ever been in a cinema, or knew what cinema was," he told the DGA.
'The Wrong Trousers' (1993)
"I’m a huge, HUGE fan of animation," Boyle has said, especially of the Wallace & Gromit stop-motion movies created by Nick Park. The second entry in the main series, The Wrong Trousers, follows the eccentric inventor and his dog as they attempt to stop an evil penguin named Feathers McGraw.
Boyle described the film's climactic scenes atop a mini steam engine as the "best action sequence I’ve ever seen in a film. Talk about breathless action!" The next entry in the Wallace & Gromit series, a sequel to 2005's The Curse of the Wererabbit, is currently in development.
'Satya' (1998)
Satya is another portrait of the Mumbai underworld, directed by Ram Gopal Varma and co-written by Anurag Kashyap. The titular character (J. D. Chakravarthy) is an immigrant who moves to the city in search of work and finds himself swept up into the mobster lifestyle. He attempts to rise through the ranks of this dog-eat-dog environment, while the police close in on him at the same time. Satya is the Hindi worth for truth, which is apt: Satya is an unusually honest man, at least for a criminal, which gets him into all kinds of trouble.
It's a harsh, low-budget movie that became a cult classic and established the subgenre known as 'Mumbai noir'. Boyle has cited it as a major influence on Slumdog Millionaire. Specifically, he said that the film offers a "slick, often mesmerizing" vision of Mumbai, defined by "brutality and urban violence."
'Company' (2002)
Company is the sequel to Satya, and follows two gangsters, Chandu (Vivek Oberoi) and Malik (Ajay Devgn), as they embark on a rampage of violence to eliminate their enemies. They succeed, establishing themselves as the dominant players in the Mumbai crime scene. However, soon cracks appear in Chandu and Malik's friendship, with explosive consequences.
Company pays homage to American gangster movies (especially the work of Michael Mann) but filters them through Varma's unique perspective. His trademarks are all over the film, especially the chaotic zoom-ins and Dutch angles. It was a commercial success and one of Varma's most acclaimed movies. Company was followed in 2005 with another crime film called D. It's worth watching for the cinematography by Hemant Chaturvedi and the terrific performances from Oberoi, Devgn, and Mohanlal.