Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) narrates his epic and darkly humorous rise from poor villager to successful entrepreneur in modern India. Cunning and ambitious, our young hero jockeys his way into becoming a driver for Ashok (Rajkumar Rao) and Pinky (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas), who have just returned from America. Society has trained Balram to be one thing--a servant--so he makes himself indispensable to his rich masters. But after a night of betrayal, he realizes the corrupt lengt... (Full plot summary below)
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Balram Halwai (Adarsh Gourav) narrates his epic and darkly humorous rise from poor villager to successful entrepreneur in modern India. Cunning and ambitious, our young hero jockeys his way into becoming a driver for Ashok (Rajkumar Rao) and Pinky (Priyanka Chopra-Jonas), who have just returned from America. Society has trained Balram to be one thing--a servant--so he makes himself indispensable to his rich masters. But after a night of betrayal, he realizes the corrupt lengths they will go to trap him and save themselves. On the verge of losing everything, Balram rebels against a rigged, unequal system to rise up and become a new kind of master.
Leave your thoughts about The White Tiger.
| Original-CinLiam LaceyThere’s nothing new in noting that crime and dirty politics are fast tracks to success. (“Is it the same in your country?” Balram asks the viewer). What’s more interesting here is how The White Tiger explores the paradoxes of the master-servant dynamic. Singer-actor Gourav is marvelous in capturing the duality. |
| Arizona RepublicBill GoodykoontzThe film is a fascinating struggle between Balram’s promise and capability and the generations of ingrained, unfeeling privilege that stacks the deck against him. |
| Wall Street JournalJoe MorgensternWhile Mr. Bahrani’s film shares certain themes with Danny Boyle’s international hit, it’s a great entertainment in its own right, a zestful epic blessed with rapier wit, casually dazzling dialogue, gorgeous cinematography (by Paolo Carnera ) and, at the center of it all, a sensational star turn by an actor, singer and songwriter named Adarsh Gourav. |
| Boston GlobeTy BurrDirector Bahrani has always buried his social concerns in story and character; he’s one of the very few American filmmakers to pay attention to this country’s poor, and he applies his creativity to the paradoxes of India without missing a step. |
| New York PostJohnny OleksinskiThe real find here is Gourav, who gives a pressure-cooker turn as Balram, a guy who can no longer smile and nod at his own oppression. He switches rapidly from sweet to deranged, gullible to Machiavellian, generous to bloodthirsty. This guy’s got more layers than spanakopita. |
| Chicago TribuneMichael PhillipsThe moral conundrums aren’t particularly thorny, since Balram’s revenge is well-earned. Yet Bahrani works so well with the individual actors, they seem like people, not archetypes or stereotypes. |
| TheWrapAlonso DuraldeThe White Tiger illustrates the extremes to which the poor are driven to violate the rigid class structure of India, with the implication that our hero and his methodology is perhaps the face of post-superpower capitalism itself. |
| UproxxVince ManciniWhite Tiger subverts expectations right up until the very end, self-consciously commenting on what it doesn’t do as much as what it does. In that way White Tiger allows other stories to define it maybe more than it should. |
| Christian Science MonitorPeter RainerIf Balram was simply a born hustler, his odyssey would not have the resonance it has here. But we can see glimmers of what he might have become if not for his caste. |
| The TelegraphRobbie CollinIt’s a punchy, propulsive watch, blown along by snappy editing and a hip-hop-driven soundtrack that stresses that there’s still much fun to be had when hefty themes of inequality and geopolitics are being tackled. And honestly? There really is. |
