My Review of "The Tiger Hunter"

The Tiger Hunter showed up on my Netflix suggestions out of nowhere. I haven't ever heard of it but it seemed like an interesting film to check it out. When I initially started watching it, I had an idea that it was going to be your typical romantic comedy but it isn't. This movie is more about chasing dreams and learning what's important in life.

It all starts with the main character Sami. He was born and raised in a small poor village. It seems that everyone lives pretty happy there but he has huge aspirations for himself. This all stems from his idolization of his late father.

His father was known as a great tiger hunter that the whole village loved. He basically sacrificed everything for Sami as any father would. Sami in turn got an engineering degree. Unfortunately for Sami there aren't too many opportunities in India for engineers.

Everyone at the time has high hopes to move to America believing it to be the land of opportunity. To further entice him to move to America his childhood sweetheart Ruby is to be married to a successful American. He hopes to be this man. Her father is a general and I guess they still have arranged marriages at the time.

So he moves over to America and quickly realizes that it isn't as he envisioned it to be. He hits a whole bunch of bad luck and starts to lose all hope until a stranger by the name of Babu takes him in.

Nobody helped Babu when he first moved to America so he wants to help others that fell into the same situation as him. He's helped a lot of people. Sami realizes that this small apartment that he can stay in has about 12 other roommates. They're all engineers but work in odd jobs like taxi drivers or dishwashers. This is pretty much similar to many immigrants that move to North America today. It's funny that not too much has changed since 1979.

So he becomes desperate to make it big so that he can impress Ruby's dad. This way he can marry the love of his life. At this point I thought it was going to be a romantic comedy but it turned out to be a totally different movie.

I love the enthusiasm of Babu. He's the idealistic immigrant that a lot of people imagine immigrants to be. Despite the bad situation he's in he always has a positive spin on things. It's a good contrast to Sami because there doesn't seem to be much hope for either of them.

It becomes apparently obvious how the movie is going to end up but in the meantime they talk about the various immigrant experiences that new immigrants go through. They talk about how immigrants have to learn how to fit into society by learning about the norms in society. Even still after learning the norms and fitting in there's a totally different culture in this dog eat dog world of corporations.

Sami is a naive guy from India and doesn't realize that people will try to take advantage of him. He tries to live a clean and honest life but it's pretty difficult when there's so many influences in America. His mother even warns him about this early on in the movie.

The movie later becomes a story about friendship and how we should conduct ourselves with each other. Our worth does not come from the successes that we achieve but rather the way we make others feel. There's a revelation close to the end and it's pretty nice and feel good moment.

Overall, I enjoyed this movie from start to finish. It was a fun ride and I think a lot of people would be able to still identify with this movie even though they don't experience the same situations as Sami. I have to give this movie an 8 out of 10. It is an enjoyable movie that everyone can enjoy because it's wholesome and fun.