Boxing Clever: 30 minutes into The White Tiger, and I couldn’t take my eyes off it
The White Tiger Declan Burke
Saturday night is a problem now , i sn’t it? There’s no thrill watching another few episodes of an okayish thing on Netflix — that’s got a Wednesday or Thursday feeling about. Friday night, you’ve got Gogglebox or the Late Late or Graham Norton, you won’t be stuck.
But Saturday night needs a bit of occasion about it, now that we’re all stuck at home . M y wife and I were only saying the other day that we’d love a proper love-every-scene movie like or . Then I read somewhere that (Netflix) has a Goodfellas feel about it. I thought that would be good enough for me.
Except it wasn’t, at least at the start anyway. is an adaptation of the 2008 Man Booker Prize-winning novel of the same name, written by Aravind Adiga. It tells the story of Balram, a lower caste Indian man in modern-day India who wangles a job as a driver for a rich family and escapes from his village into another world.
I took time to warm up to it because basically the comparison made me pine for Ray Liotta and his wise-guy patter. Balram is low-key in comparison and you’d miss Joe Pesci and Robert De Niro. But 30 minutes into , and I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
It fillets every aspect of modern India, from the violent suppression of the poor, to so-called socialist heroes on the take. The best bits are when Balram brings his master and the master’s wife to Delhi, where they stay in an exclusive hotel, while he lives in the underground car park with the other drivers. I don’t know if drivers actually sleep in the car park in modern-day India, but it’s a brilliant device to separate Balram from his upper-class employers, who can’t decide if they should patronise him or treat him like dirt. Don’t worry, this is much more than a worthy parable about poverty and class. It’s full of plot turns, sexy energy, dodgy characters, random violence — and the soundtrack is off the scale. Balram might be low-key and modest, but he’s wily too and turns the tables over time. I think the best thing I could say about right now is that it would remind me of a bit. This adaptation is that good. It might just save your Saturday night.
And now for a semi-recommendation from my wife. She’s stuck into on Netflix — I can’t watch it because it involves murdered kids, which freaks me out. Set in late 19 th century New York, it’s about an unlikely band of detectives chasing down a serial killer while wearing uncomfortable looking clothes. The wife tends to put it on if there is nothing better to watch, in the way you’d throw on a go-to pair of leggings. It might be just the thing to keep you going on Wednesday or Thursday night, before you crack open the good stuff at the weekend.
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