The White Tiger – Review

Film, Reviews, Top Story

Early on in the film the “white tiger,” the animal that the movie is named after, is used as a metaphor to describe someone rare and special. White tigers may only be seen once in a generation in the wild, and it is as rare as the gifts these lucky few people have to change their lives for the better. However, it’s another animal metaphor, one that takes on a much more sinister tone that colors the outlook of most of the movie. 

Balram (Adarsh Gourav), the movie’s narrator and main character uses the image of a rooster coop to describe the structure of the indian society that he was born into. He describes for the audience a coop where hundreds of chickens are stored, living their lives unable to have any impact on the direction of their own lives. Even the roosters who can see other roosters being taken from the coop and slaughtered in front of their own eyes have no way to keep themselves from being next. Nor does it ever even occur to them that they could have the power to make any meaningful changes in their lives. They are trapped, to live out their days in the coop. 

Balram was born into this metaphorical coop, as a part of a large, poor family, he isn’t even given a name, and is referred to as “boy, until a school teacher finally calls him Balram. However, school doesn’t last long, as Belram is quickly removed and put to work to add another pair of hands to the labor pool that tries to keep his family fed. Belram seems distended to live his life performing hard, manual labor, until dying like his father, alone in a hospital, without even a doctor available. This is the trajectory of his life, trapped in the “rooster coop,” until he gets a chance to become a chauffeur to Ashok (Rajkummar Rao), the son of The Stork, one of the landlords of the village. 

In the service of Ashok and his family, Balram gets a chance to see a whole new version of India. One of the higher class, who live in a different world than Balram or his family, despite their geographical proximity. And this is where the movie really begins to excel. 

The White Tiger is a movie that likes to take big swings. It tackles big topics such as globalization, The class system in India, individualism, and the idea of what does or doesn’t make a good person. In each case (as well as a few other themes that are touched on throughout the movie) the film does an incredibly engrossing job of bringing the viewer into the world that it is presenting for them. The movie is heavily narrated by an older Balram who is recounting his tale, and in each case the narration is able to provide the context for why the sequences in the movie are unfolding in a certain way. It’s able to create characters who can be both sympathetic and despicable at the same time. 

For example two of the characters who spend the most time with Balram are Ashok and his wife Pinky (Priyanka Chopra), both Indian born characters who spend most of their upbringing living in the United States. Their outlook on the world seems to clash with everyone around them. Pinky berrates Ashok’s family for the way they treat Balram, while Ashok clashes with them on how to move India forward in the modern global world. In both cases the characters want to make the world a better place. We have no reason to doubt that their actions come from a place of genuinely wanting to put good into the world. Yet, they can not live in the world without being touched by it. Pinky can condemn others for how they treat their servants, yet she does this from the comfort of a home and a life that none of the servants could ever hope to obtain. Ashok wants to bring what he views as better life to people, while being a burden on those same people in ways that he can never quite be objective enough to realize. So many of the characters in the movie walk the line of despicable, yet never stray far enough to keep from being successfully presented as tragic. Even as Balram’s character develops headed down the more morally complicated path that we know he will travel, he always remains a sympathetic and compelling protagonist. 


The White Tiger tries to tell a lot of a story in in’s run time and touches on pretty much every social economic theme under the sun. What’s really impressive is how well balanced the final product is. It feels complicated, yet intimate at the same time, as we see a handful of characters living in a world so much bigger and overwhelming that seems comprehendible. As the movie heads towards the conclusion that was hinted at in the opening minutes, we get to see a story that could seem like a simple, paint by numbers, journey, and get to watch it unfold in a way that is as complicated and messy as it really would be.

Joel Leonard reviews the latest movies each week for Inside Pulse. You can follow him @joelgleo on Twitter though he's not promising to ever tweet anything from there. Joel also co-hosts the Classy Ring Attire podcast and writes the No Chance column on Inside Pulse as well.