Just imagine if he had made it onto Card Sharks: "Slumdog Millionaire"

What's Hindi for "Higher!" and "Lower!", anyway?

I must admit that movies set in India usually aren't my bag. Alas, with every critic raving about this movie, I felt compelled to check it out over the holidays. Good thing, because it's the best movie I've seen in many months.

Our story revolves around Jamal, an Indian teen who is thisclose to winning the big enchilada on that country's version of "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?" That's right ... 20 million rupees. I don't know my exchange rates, but that sounds pretty good. The problem is that nobody can believe how a kid from the Mumbai slums has gotten this far on the show. So we find out by learning about Jamal's life to date. It ain't pretty.

Director Danny Boyle -- who probably doesn't get as much respect as he deserves but should after this -- shows us Jamal, his brother Salim and Jamal's would-be girl, Latika, from their early years all the way to today. It's a riveting odyssey -- perhaps too violent and depressing, but hey, that's life.

By cutting back and forth from Jamal explaining his success on the game show to events that shaped his life (and provided the answers), we also see how India has evolved over the last dozen years or so. It is, in a word, fascinating. The slums gave way to high rises. Begging gave way to call centers. Dollars flowed more freely than rupees. As I told my wife, the last movie that gave me such a great sense of place with a foreign country was "Lost in Translation," although that didn't have the passage of time element. Still, similar success in really showing the essence of a strange land.

The cast of no names is perfect. Dev Patel is the teen Jamal, but the two kids who played him at younger ages were just as solid, as were the young Salims. In the end, though, it's the story that really won me over. Here's this kid, under fire for doing something he shouldn't have been able to do on this game show. Yet it makes sense when you learn about his brutally tough life. And the real reason he went on the show -- which normally would be cheesy -- makes sense and is genuinely touching. You simply can't root against the guy.

So yeah ... "Slumdog" is the real deal. Never boring, often compelling and ultimately winning. When it comes to epic tales of unlikely people suddenly striking it rich, it looks like "Brewster's Millions" finally has some competition.