Amal Kumar (Rupinder Nagra) is an auto rickshaw driver trying to make an honest living on the streets of New Delhi in Toronto-based filmmaker Richie Mehta's debut feature, Amal. (Poor Man's Productions Limited)

Amal, the debut feature from Toronto-based filmmaker Richie Mehta, is part Hindu fable, part Bollywood melodrama, part neorealist cityscape. It’s an unlikely cinematic mix, but somehow, the film’s modest, sweet-natured heart contains it all.

The premise has the sturdy simplicity of a morality tale. G.K. Jayaram (Bollywood vet Naseeruddin Shah) dresses like a tramp and wanders the streets of Delhi in the seemingly quixotic search for the world’s last honest man. He finds him in Amal Kumar (the immensely likable Rupinder Nagra), an auto rickshaw driver who is uncomplaining, unselfish and, unlike his peers, actually charges the meter rate.

G.K. soon dies and turns out to have been an eccentric millionaire who left a last-minute will and a mysterious blue letter addressed to Amal. Brisk lawyer Sapna Agarwal (Seema Biswas, best known for a breakout performance in Bandit Queen in 1994) searches for Amal so that he can sign a paper and claim his unexpected inheritance. “How to find him among a 1,000 Delhi scooter-wallahs?” G.K’s dodgy partner, Suresh (Roshan Seth), quite rightly asks. Then again, it might be in Suresh’s best interests not to find him: if Amal doesn’t show up within 30 days, G.K.’s fortune will revert to his wastrel sons, with whom Suresh has a secret deal.

On the one side, we have the almost comically debauched sons — Harish (Siddhant Beh) is a weakling; Vivek (Vik Sahay) a Machiavellian monster — scheming after money. On the other, we have the fantastically virtuous Amal. In a subplot that would make Charlie Chaplin blush, Amal works double shifts to care for an ailing orphan girl and falls into a scrupulously chaste romance with a pretty customer (Köel Purie).

The script began as a story by Shaun Mehta – Richie’s brother — and was adapted first into a short film. As we head toward Amal’s 30-day deadline, the plot to the feature-length version sometimes feels stretched, the suspense propped up with last-minute reversals and colossal coincidences. (For a metropolitan centre of 17 million people, Delhi seems to be a pretty small town.) As well, given its deliberately old-fashioned archetypes — the humble working man, the worthless heirs, the plucky orphan girl — Amal comes dangerously close to sappiness.

G.K. Jayaram (Naseeruddin Shah) is an eccentric millionaire searching for an honest man in Amal. (Poor Man's Productions Limited)

But just as Mehta closes in on his cornball quotient, he slips in something unsentimental, even topical. Channelling not the glorious escapism of Bollywood but the realist vision of Indian auteur Satyajit Ray, Mehta catches the crowded hustle of Delhi’s street life, where every encounter seems to involve a financial transaction – official or otherwise. Mehta also hints at new pressures and possibilities as the tiger that is India’s new economy wakes up and stretches. Amal warily eyes the construction of the new metro system, which could render his auto rickshaw obsolete; Sapna juggles the very different stresses of a privileged professional woman, being pulled between work and a somewhat forlorn husband.

Mitchell Ness’s cinematography is direct and elegant, and the original music, by Dr. Shiva, is nicely pitched. The cast members – which Mehta pulled in from India, England and Canada – are well matched. Nagra, as Amal, embodies fundamental goodness without being priggish while Sahay portrays Vivek as a beautifully bored cosmopolitan, somehow retaining just a hint of lost-boy poignancy.

There are clumsy moments and some first-timer flaws, but with profound affection for its characters and the teeming city they inhabit, Amal cheerfully resists cynicism. You might not necessarily believe the moral of Richie Mehta’s story — that kindness and decency hold their own rewards — but you’d have to have a heart of brass not to want to believe.

Amal opens in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal on Aug. 8 and in Calgary,Winnipeg and Halifax on Aug. 15.

Alison Gillmor is a writer based in Winnipeg.