Directed by Ramin Bahrani, The White Tiger released on Netflix is a cinematic adaptation of Aravind Adiga’s award winning novel with the same title published in 2008. Narrated by the lead character himself through a voice over, it’s about how he manages to become the owner of a car-rental firm in Bangalore, coming from a low caste, poor family in the interiors.
Remaining quite close to the subject of the Oscar winner PARASITE (Korea), though the film doesn’t offer anything fresh in terms of content, it does have a superlative lead performance by Adarsh Gourav (of Rukh fame) effortlessly getting into the skin of his character, walking on the thin line between good and the evil. Maintaining a lighter tone along with dealing with the darker zones of both the rich and the poor, The White Tiger presents a fast paced, cunning portrayal of all familiar characters that thankfully doesn’t get boring keeping the interest alive.
However with Adarsh simply owning the screen, the supporting cast just appears to be fine featuring Rajkummar Rao, Mahesh Manjrekar, Vijay Maurya, Kamlesh Gill and Priyanka Chopra Jonas - who makes a loud kind of effort beside being the executive producer of the film.
Among the downers, it also seems to be a movie depicting India and its people with a biased vision of a westerner as seen in projects like The Slumdog Millionaire. Probably that’s the reason one finds many deliberate and illogical insertions in the narrative just to generate a superficial kind of impact representing Indian society strongly led by corruption, poverty, inequality, poor hygiene and exploitive caste-divide. For that reason, it also might not be a satisfactory adaptation of the much appreciated novel.
In all, The White Tiger deserves to be seen for the applause-worthy act by Adarsh Gaurav, even when the film keeps struggling to be above average. Though luck plays a crucial part in the world of glamour, this particular project is bound to do wonders for the young actor in his career ahead.
Rating : 2+1 / 5 (with the additional one star specifically for the worth praising performance of Adarsh)
