Review: The Roar Of 'The White Tiger' Isn't Uniform

Can one man's miraculous rags-to-riches story encapsulate the cumulative "truth of India"? Balram Halwai, the protagonist of The White Tiger, would have us - and a Chinese Premier, no less - believe that it can. The truth is that his account, vivid as it is, merely skims the surface of a complex, ever-morphing social collage.

Aravind Adiga's Booker Prize-winning 2008 bestselling debut novel did pretty much the same. The adaptation for the screen by Iranian-American writer-director Ramin Bahrani fares no better. But that is not to say that the Netflix original film has nothing to commend itself.

As it glides through the themes of poverty, inequity and rebellion, the two-hour film captures an underprivileged man's fight for freedom from "the chicken coop" that life has dumped him into. This guy is unlike others of his ilk, poverty-stricken people too broken in spirit to contemplate escape. Balram is a white tiger, "a freak, a pervert of nature' born once a generation. He dares to dream of clawing out of the hellhole.