Bruce Dauphin

As important as it was to get all that money to its destination, why does he decide to combine it with a fitness bike ride? Why not use a bit of cash to rent a car and deliver the stash safely? If I were on such an important mission I wouldn’t be cycling down a deserted highway with music blasting in my ears unable to monitor the situation. A weak premise to start out on. Take out the cash delivery premise, leave it as a fitness run gone bad—that would have been a more sensible plot progression.

I got put off at the very first scene: In a London hospital, a privileged Indian patient flashes a bit of cash to the white British custodian as a bribe to get him to help her violate the no smoking policy. This is emblematic of how so many Indian portrayals of Westerners get things wrong. It may be very Indian for the privileged to demean their lower castes with trite offerings, but that isn’t how class bias works in the West. Not that there isn’t class bias in the West. But it isn’t a mirror image of India’s. Indian film portrayals of the West seem always to miss the mark when it comes to having authenticity.

The story is a magnificent narrative--the protagonist is himself the narrator in the person that he would eventually evolve into. And did he evolve! That was the beauty of this story. It was not a simple coming of age or rags to riches tale. It was the evolution of a character who would become like a precious gem, precious not in spite its imperfections but because of them. And the plot line was unpredictable in the best of ways. The lead actor should have won an academy for his depiction. He portrays the full spectrum of emotion with subtle and convincing realism. One of many great examples of this is in how his affect gradually darkens as he reads and begins to understand the confession he was being manipulated into signing. The story is also epic in how it shines light on a variety of social, economic and and political ills in present-day India. I simply loved this film. I loved the depth of character. I liked too how there were poetic flourishes sprinkled about in things that either the protagonist or the narrator would say. Even the whole "white tiger" allusion is cleverly weaved into the storyline in just the right places. I do feel there are some viewers, based on comments like the following, who have experienced this film on only a superficial level. One commenter says, "Basically the movie is glorifying crime and making a statement that it’s pretty heroic to kill your master and make it big rather than be his lifelong servant. There were days when people prided themselves on serving their employees honestly." This comment is so interesting. The murder which takes place is neither glorified nor justified in the story. There are a complex set of events and an evolution in the protagonist's understanding of who he is that results in his somewhat impulsive and irrational commission of murder. It is similar to how he betrays the secretly Muslim driver number one. Both acts represent flaws in the protagonists character which he expresses regret about, but are nonetheless critical to his eventual understanding of who he is and also function as commentary on some of the problems in Indian society. Now as to the comment about serving one's employers. no one should be anyone's servant, much less a "lifelong servant." This is certainly one of the key messages in the film.