General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Millions

Millions is a 2004 British children's comedy drama directed by Danny Boyle and written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, in which two brothers, Damian and Anthony, find a bag of stolen money that fell from a passing train days before Britain's fictional conversion to the Euro, leaving them one week to spend it.¹ The film stars Alex Etel as Damian, Lewis Owen McGibbon as Anthony, James Nesbitt as their father Ronnie, and Daisy Donovan as the charity worker Dorothy.²

Key fact	Detail
Director / writer	Danny Boyle; screenplay by Frank Cottrell Boyce¹
Production year / genre	2004, UK; children's comedy drama¹
Running time	98 minutes (listed as 97 mins in the British Council database)²^•¹
UK release	25 May 2005, certificate 12A, distributed by Pathé²
US release	Wide release March 11, 2005, rated PG; gross in the USA $6.6M³
Critical scores	87% Tomatometer from 159 reviews; Metacritic average 7.4³^•⁴
Awards	Best Screenplay for Frank Cottrell Boyce at the 2005 British Independent Film Awards⁵

Spoilers

Premise

The story is set in a slightly altered Britain in which the pound is about to be replaced by the Euro, so that billions of sterling notes are headed for the incinerator.¹ When a railway heist goes wrong, an enormous bag of money falls from the sky into the hands of seven-year-old Damian and his nine-year-old brother Anthony, who have recently moved to a new house with their father after the death of their mother.¹^•⁶

The brothers react in opposite ways. Damian, a self-taught enthusiast for the lives of the saints who receives visitations from canonised figures, believes the money is a gift from God and sets out to give it to the poor.⁷ Anthony, ever practical, wants to invest it, running black-market operations that bring hyper-inflation to the school playground.¹ The central problem is arithmetic as much as morality: how can two children spend a quarter of a million pounds in a week, before the currency becomes worthless, while the train robbers want their money back?¹

The saints who appear to Damian are treated comically but carry the film's moral argument. St. Francis of Assisi inspires him to serve the poor, the Martyrs of Uganda recommend building clean water wells, and St. Peter retells the feeding of the 5,000 as a story in which one act of generosity inspires others.⁶ Damian's faith is tested when he learns that the money was stolen in the heist and tossed from the train by a robber who planned to retrieve it later, raising the question of whether money can do good coming from dishonest origins.⁶

Production and origins

The project began as a screenplay. Boyle said in a 2004 interview that the script came first, and that he suggested to Frank Cottrell Boyce that he turn it into a book, which was picked up by a publisher; the finished novel contained scenes not in the script, such as the St Peter scene, which Boyle then added to the film.⁸ The film was a Mission Pictures production presented by Pathé Pictures in association with the UK Film Council and BBC Films, shot on 35mm, with cinematography by Anthony Dod Mantle, music by John Murphy, and editing by Chris Gill.²^•¹

For Boyle, known for the R-rated Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, and 28 Days Later, a family film was an unexpected direction; the Independent reviewer Anthony Quinn called it the least likely genre the director could have chosen after his earlier work.⁹ Boyle himself described the film as a cross between Amélie and Trainspotting.¹⁰

Style

The film uses a deliberately heightened visual language. The Guardian's Toronto festival review describes it as painted with supersaturated primary colors and buzzing with stop-motion digital effects, including a sequence in which the boys' new home assembles itself from the ground up.⁷ Reviewers also noted its genre mixture: the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it "thriller, comedy and rite-of-passage story" at once, and Screen Daily compared its premise to classic Ealing comedy while noting that Boyle attacks it with energy that feels entirely modern.⁴^•¹¹

Reception

Critical response was broadly positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds an 87% Tomatometer from 159 reviews, with the site's critics consensus calling it "a charming children fable even adults can enjoy"; its audience score stands at 77% from more than 25,000 ratings.³ Metacritic lists an average of 7.4, and the aggregated English-language reviews at thecritics.uk range from 10/10 (San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Sun-Times) down to 5/10 (The New Yorker, Baltimore Sun, Village Voice).⁴ Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times gave it 10/10, calling it "a family film of limitless imagination and surprising joy".⁴

Not all reviews were warm. Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian gave it 3 out of 5, finding it a reasonably successful entry in the old-fashioned kids' movie genre, while Jessica Winter's festival review argued that the film's final turns obscured its tougher consideration of the limits of faith, hope, and charity.¹²^•⁷ Screen Daily predicted the film might struggle to define itself as family fare or adult drama and fall through the cracks.¹¹

At the 2005 British Independent Film Awards, Frank Cottrell Boyce won Best Screenplay, and Alex Etel was nominated for Most Promising Newcomer; the film also received a Saturn Award nomination for Etel's performance and a Phoenix Film Critics Society award for Best Live Action Family Film.⁵

Other films named Millions

The title has been used elsewhere in British cinema. Millions (1936) is a United Kingdom film directed by Leslie Hiscott, produced by Herbert Wilcox, written by Michael Barringer, and featuring Gordon Harker, Frank Pettingell, and Richard Hearne; it is preserved and streamable on BFI Player.¹³ The 2004 Boyle film should not be confused with it, nor with unrelated later titles such as the 2024 Thai film How to Make Millions Before Grandma Dies.¹⁴

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Individual films by title and year › Comedy and romantic films (individual works) › Comedies of 2003 to 2004 › Titles M to Y

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

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