City of Joy (1992 film)

City of Joy is a 1992 French-British drama film directed by Roland Joffé, with a screenplay by Mark Medoff. It is based upon the novel of the same name by Dominique Lapierre, which looks at poverty in then-modern India, specifically life in the slums. The film stars Patrick Swayze, Om Puri and Shabana Azmi.

Plot
Hasari Pal (Om Puri) is a rural farmer who moves to Calcutta with his wife Kamla (Shabana Azmi) and three children in search of a better life. The Pals do not get off to a good start: they are cheated out of their rent money and thrown out on the streets, and it's difficult for Hasari to find a job to support them. But the determined family refuses to give up and eventually finds its place in the poverty-stricken city.

Meanwhile, on the other end of Calcutta, Max Lowe (Patrick Swayze), a Houston surgeon distraught after the loss of a young patient, has arrived in search of spiritual enlightenment. However, he encounters misfortune as soon as he arrives. After being tricked by a young prostitute, he is roughed up by thugs and left bleeding in the street without his documents and valuable possessions.

Hasari comes to Max's aid and takes the injured doctor to the "City of Joy," a slum area populated with lepers and poor people which becomes the Pals' new home and the American's home-away-from-home. Max spends a lot of time in the neighborhood, but he does not want to become too involved with the residents because he is afraid of becoming emotionally attached to them. He soon, however, is coaxed into helping his new-found friends by a strong-willed Irish woman (Pauline Collins), who runs the local clinic.

Eventually, Max begins to fit in with his fellow slum-dwellers and become more optimistic. There are many around him whose lives are much worse, but they look on each day with a hope that gives new strength to the depressed doctor.

Cast

 * Patrick Swayze as Max Lowe
 * Om Puri as Hasari Pal
 * Pauline Collins as Joan Bethel
 * Vishal Slathia as Joey Barton
 * Shabana Azmi as Kamla H. Pal
 * Anashua Majumdar as Selima
 * Ayesha Dharker as Amrita H. Pal
 * Santu Chowdhury as Shambu H. Pal
 * Imran Badsah Khan as Manooj H. Pal
 * Shyamanand Jalan as Mr. Ghatak, the godfather
 * Anjan Dutt as Dr Sunil
 * Art Malik as Ashok Ghatak
 * Nabil Shaban as Anouar
 * Sanjay Pathak as Shoba
 * Debatosh Ghosh as Ram Chande
 * Sunita Sengupta as Pormina
 * Loveleen Mishra as Shanta
 * Pavan Malhotra as Ashish
 * Iftekhar as Hasari's father
 * Chitra Sen as the angry woman
 * Dipti Dave as a school girl

Reception
By contrast to some of Joffe's previous successes (The Killing Fields), the film was not a box office success, even on its modest budget; According to the Internet Movie Database and Box Office Mojo, the film grossed $14.7 million in the United States. Critically, the film received mixed reviews, with a 56% 'rotten' rating on review aggregate Rotten Tomatoes.