You’d never expect an uplifting movie to begin with a brutal interrogation. However, "Slumdog Millionaire" is no ordinary movie. Director Danny Boyle and screenwriter Simon Beaufoy take a lot of familiar plot elements and repackage them in a relentlessly entertaining new way.

Boyle is known for the unconventional "Trainspotting," and Beaufoy is the writer behind the crowd-pleasing "The Full Monty." Together, they’ve come up with a new twist on an old love story that hums with energy from start to finish.

The movie begins in the teeming city of Mumbai (formerly Bombay), where the wealth of the new India is surrounded by acres of crushing poverty. Jamal (Dev Patel) is being questioned by the local constabulary which isn’t above using beatings and electric shock to get Jamal to fess up. The young man is a successful contestant on India’s version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?," and the show’s condescending and sleazy host believes Jamal has to be cheating. After all, Jamal grew up on the streets and is now working as a gofer at a call center.

Jamal explains to the inspector (the excellent Irrfan Khan) that he gained his knowledge of trivia through life experience, and thus begin the flashbacks that tell his story. Here, the filmmakers take us on a guided tour of the horrific poverty and cruelty that Jamal and his brother Salim managed to survive.

To maintain the realism that the story needs to be effective, Boyle trades the romanticism of the plot for raw and grim reality. After the boys’ mother is killed in an attack on their Muslim neighborhood, the lads are left to fend for themselves. They also befriend Latika, a young girl who’s also orphaned. This begins Jamal’s "Doctor Zhivago" journey.

The three children are duped into joining a beggar enclave controlled by an evil manipulator who maims children in order to make them better earners. Salim leads an escape but Latika is left behind, and Jamal is destined to never forget her. Meanwhille, he and Salim become expert artful dodgers, conning Taj Mahal tourists out of their money and stealing anything in sight. As Jamal searches for Latika in Mumbai’s red-light district, Salim goes into full gangster mode, turning from protector into betrayer.

Will the boy get the girl? And will he win the 20 million rupees against all odds? In the hands of the director and writer, these are questions that can be answered either way depending on which buttons the filmmakers want to push. That keeps the dramatic tension amped and the suspense high.

Boyle gets fine performances from his actors. Patel is slyly ironic, a perfect foil for his duplicitous game-show host played by India’s popular Anil Kapoor. Most important, he brings his passion for Latika to convincing life. Madhur Mittal as the adult Salim is volatile and self-serving but not beyond redemption. Freida Pinto as the grown-up Latika is vulnerable, pragmatic and stunning. The young people who play these characters in their earlier years are exuberant, heartbreaking and a testament to survival.

Add to the performances a great score, lively cinematography and a narrative structure that finds drama on several levels, and you have an engrossing two hours at the movies.