Jamal (Dev Patel), is questioned by a police inspector (Irfan Khan) in Slumdog Millionaire.

AP / Ishika Mohan

In the rollicking, surprisingly violent Slumdog Millionaire, a young man from the slums of Mumbai hopes to win the 20-million rupee prize on India’s version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? so he can win the hand of the woman he has longed for ever since they were children.

Part Romeo and Juliet romance, part hardscrabble action thriller, part Bollywood musical (well, at least at the end), Slumdog Millionaire is an odd mix of ingredients that works most of the time.

Golden Globe Awards best director-nominee Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later), had never been to India before making this movie but has created a film that has the pulse of the country, from its impoverished millions to its deluxe high-rise neighborhoods. More importantly, Slumdog Millionaire moves, moves, moves with rapid-fire, rat-a-tat-tat pacing, occasionally pausing long enough, however, to maintain its focus on the arm’s-length romance that gives the film its grounding in the real world.

Slumdog Millionaire opens with Jamal Malik (Dev Patel) coming up with all the right answers on the Hindi version of the Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? TV show. The show’s slick emcee (Anil Kapoor), who is just as quick-witted and unctuous as any American TV game show host, is all fawning and fake excitement over Jamal’s uncanny ability to come up with the right answers. Secretly, however, he doesn’t believe that 18-year-old Jamal could come up with one correct answer after the next.

Between the end of one show, when Jamal is halfway to his 20-million-rupee goal, and the next, the TV host has Jamal tied up and tortured to the point of unconsciousness in hopes of making him confess that he has somehow cheated. “Tell me how you cheated!” he screams at Jamal. “What the hell can a slumdog know?”

To this, the barely conscious Jamal can only whisper, “I knew the answers.”

Much of the rest of Slumdog Millionaire consists of flashbacks in which Jamal recounts how each and every question posed to him on the TV show relates to something in his earlier life, beginning in childhood when he and his brother, Samil, were tiny mischievous beggars-con-artists-thieves in the slums of Mumbai, where they survived by their wits. Part of a gang employed by a kind of Fagin character, they and their young friend Latika were sent out to cheat and steal, often resulting in their being chased through the back alleys by the police. (Nine actors play Jamal, Samil and Latika at various stages in their lives.)

In one of the film’s funniest, and certainly ickiest, sequences, Jamal escapes from a locked public latrine so he can get the autograph of his favorite movie star by diving into the goop underneath the toilet. Covered in stinky waste, he makes his way over to the actor to the disgust of the rest of the crowd … and no doubt the movie audience as well.

At one point Jamal, Samil and Latika are trying to escape from police who are running after them, when they hop a passing train. But Latika doesn’t make it. Later enslaved by the head of the gang to be sold into prostitution, her plight becomes Jamal’s romantic crisis, sending him on a years-long search to find her. She is, as far as Jamal is concerned, his destiny. Along with Samil, he thinks of them as their own version of the Three Musketeers.

Set to a cheerfully bouncy Bollywood musical soundtrack, Boyle has brought an excitement and urgency to Jamal’s ongoing odyssey with lickety-split editing and Jamal’s increasing desperation. There are outlandish asides that perk up the film, too, including a visit to the Taj Mahal where Jamal pretends he’s a guide and weaves an insane tale about its creation to unsuspecting tourists. (Besides Boyle, the film has been nominated for Golden Globes in categories for best drama film, best original score — A.R. Rahman — and best screenplay — Simon Beaufoy.)

Along the way one discovers, just like the TV show’s host, that all the seeds of Jamal’s education can be found in the things that have happened to him. When, for instance, he’s asked who invented the revolver, Jamal flashes back to a time when his more violent, more criminally minded brother pulled a revolver on an adversary in a tight situation.

The sense of passion that exists between Jamal and Latika (the lovely Freida Pinto) doesn’t come to fruition until late in the film, however. As children their relationship seems more like a puppy-love crush. This mutes the urgency of their plight until they are grown and we can see the longing that exists between both characters. Fortunately, this adds the buoyancy that the story needs as Jamal tries to fulfill his destiny, both in romance and on television. When the unexpected Bollywood musical number erupts near the end of the film, you may want to join in the dancing and clapping.

****Slumdog Millionaire

Starring: Dev Patel, Freida Pinto, Madhur Mittal, Anil Kapoor, Irfan Khan.

Rated: R, contains violence, profanity, adult themes.

mjanuson@projo.com