The White Tiger
Directed by Ramin Bahrani
- drama
- crime
- mystery
The story
An ambitious Indian driver uses his wit and cunning to escape from poverty and rise to the top. An epic journey based on the New York Times bestseller.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached Delhi in hard afternoon light, with traffic horns, crowded markets and the glare off polished car hoods that make the city feel both overheated and glossy. Ramin Bahrani shoots much of it handheld and close, so the camera stays at the shoulder of its restless narrator, and the film often breaks the fourth wall with his direct-to-camera voiceover, sly and conspiratorial. The mood is darkly comic and tense, a sharp, wry satire with a simmering undercurrent of dread that slowly tightens over its runtime. Its pacing is brisk and chatty early on, then turns colder and more deliberate. Its arc follows a clever, resentful man learning how the wealthy and the poor each keep their place. Violence is present and eventually brutal in a few sudden moments, with a killing and a bloody climax, plus crude language, but no graphic sexual content. It suits a late-night watch for viewers who want social bite, an unreliable narrator's cynical charm, and a film that stays unsettling after the credits.
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