Detective Byomkesh Bakshy: All Reviews Here! - Page 14

Calcutta calling

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy

Rating:

April 03, 2015

Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Anand Tiwari, Neeraj Kabi, Swastika Mukherjee, Divya Menon, Meiyang Chang

Director: Dibakar Byomkesh Bakshy

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, directed by Dibakar Banerjee, is a moody thriller set in 1943 Calcutta that unravels at an unhurried pace. Loosely adapted from Bengali crime fiction writer Saradindu Bandopadhyay's enduring literary series, the film is intended as the origin story of the famous fictional sleuth.

Banerjee's Calcutta is a city of secrets and shadows lurking at every corner. A terrific opening scene - in which mysterious sinister elements show up and thwart an opium deal in the dead of the night - sets the mood for the film's noir-ish leanings. With World War II currently at its peak, the threat of oncoming Japanese bomber-jets looms large. It is against this landscape that Byomkesh (Sushant Singh Rajput), a recent graduate on the verge of taking up a teaching job, lands his first investigating assignment.

A young writer named Ajit (Anand Tiwari) is concerned about the whereabouts of his father, a reputed chemist, who has been missing for two months. The police think he's run away, but Byomkesh is convinced that the old man has been killed. As he sets about prying into the mysterious disappearance of Ajit's father from a local lodge, our private eye protagonist stumbles into a much bigger conspiracy involving Chinese drug dealers, a Japanese dentist, a femme fatale from Rangoon, and a slew of assorted characters who may or may not hold clues to the case.

Far from the sure-footed, razor-sharp sleuth of Bandopadhyay's stories, Byomkesh, in Banerjee's film, is an amateur investigator slowly coming into his own. Slowly' is the operative word here, as Banerjee and co-writer Urmi Juvekar spend more or less the entire first hour setting up the plot. Sushant Singh Rajput nicely slinks into the part of the unibrowed detective who's clearly learning on the job. He has a fragile ego, he gets queasy at the sight of blood, and oftentimes he misses clues that are staring him in the face. Rajput has a boyish quality that serves the character well; he gets the Bangla mannerisms right, the body language down pat, and gives us a hero we grow to care for.

It's the snail-paced plotting, and the surprising lack of urgency and imminent danger that cripples the film. Story strands and characters are abandoned arbitrarily, only to be revisited later. The big reveal isn't too hard to guess - stick with your gut, don't let the red herrings distract you, and lo, you've figured it out. The climax too is a mess of hammy acting.

But despite these problems, Detective Byomkesh Bakshy is a far more accomplished film than your average Bollywood offering. Every frame is crafted lovingly; the cinematography is stylish and evocative, Sneha Khanwalkar's mostly heavy-metal soundtrack terrific, and the film's production design simply first-rate. Aside from the odd clunky performance, by Swastika Mukherjee as the unintentionally hilarious seductress, the acting too is solid, particularly by Anand Tiwari, the Dr Watson to Byomkesh's Holmes, who brings stray moments of much needed lightness to a largely humorless film. Ship of Theseus' Neeraj Kabi also makes a big impression as a wise homeopath and the owner of the lodge where much of the action unfolds.

In the end the film has a lot going for it, even if it isn't as fully satisfying as Banerjee's previous works. This is a sprawling, ambitious effort with remarkable attention to detail; a film that deserves to be watched, especially for its masterful filmmaking.

I'm going with three out of five for Detective Byomkesh Bakshy. Give it a chance, prepare to be patient, and chances are that it'll stay with you.

• Detective Byomkesh .. !: A thinking man's thriller

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Director: Dibakar Banerjee

Cast: Sushant Singh Rajput, Anand Tiwari, Neeraj Kabi, Swastika Mukherjee, Divya Menon

By Saibal Chatterjee

No film from the Yash Raj Films stable has ever looked and sounded like Dibakar Banerjee's Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

It is a stylized, unconventional and wonderfully well crafted adaptation of a mystery tale that stays true to the spirit and the period of its literary source while sticking steadfastly to its own unique contemporary cinematic idiom.

Sushant Singh Rajput, in the role of the fictional detective conceived well over 80 years ago by Bengali litterateur Saradindu Bandyopadhyay, makes a marvellously understated and hugely effective hero.

The film presents private detective Byomkesh Bakshy at a point in his life when he is fresh from college and only just beginning to learn the ropes.

A college mate (Anand Tiwari) seeks his help to investigate the baffling disappearance of his father, a paan-addicted but brilliant chemist.

As he pursues the case, Byomkesh lands in the middle of a conspiracy hatched by an evil but unknown and unseen villain who is on the run from his former accomplices in Shanghai and is determined to keep his drug empire running in 1940s Kolkata.

The action unfolds in the midst of World War II, and Byomkesh encounters an array of shadowy characters that only make things difficult for him.

Among them are a boarding house owner and part-time medicine man (Neeraj Kabi), a seductive singer-danseuse (Swastika Mukherjee) and a freedom fighter's sister (debutante Divya Menon) for whom Byomkesh develops a soft spot.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! isn't what one could describe as a thrill-a-minute action film, but it is engaging fare nonetheless if one stays clued into its subtleties.

The pace is deliberate, the soundtrack is laden with contemporary indie music sounds, and the acting is subdued all the way through.

The film has been shot beautifully by Nikos Andritsakis, who delivers smoky, dimly-lit interiors with the same flair with which he composes the authentic street scenes.

The production design is absolutely top notch. It captures the period ambience with an unfailing eye for detail, lending the film its distinctive texture.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! is primarily a genre film, but it does not resort to the conventional narrative methods of the form.

It is bound to repay the patience of intelligent and demanding moviegoers who seek more than just song-and-dance and blustery heroics from their cinema.