Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!

The output vs expectation graph of Dibakar Banerjee’s latest film Detective Byomkesh Bakshy will have a negative slope. Mr. Banerjee has succeeded in creating dialogues and also in bringing some subtle humor to the content. But the main thing here is the suspense and also how intriguing the film is. May be because of Dibakar’s intention to keep it too realistic, the visuals lacked that charm to create an anxiety and excitement in us.

The movie is set in Kolkata in the 1940’s where the Second World War is happening. A man whose father was missing approaches Byomkesh as the police were not helping him. Even though Mr. Bakshy refused to take the case in the beginning he later went ahead with the case. His search for the man’s father ended up in his meetings with many people who were kind of linked to a mysterious master plan. The story is basically the attempt of this detective to find out that big mystery.

The most sincere or I should say the most solid part of Dibakar’s writing comes in the last quarter of the movie where you get to see real good conversations with some element of intrigue. That was what lacking in the majority of the movie’s screenplay – intrigue and excitement. Ultimately Byomkesh Bakshy is no different from any other detective movie. Byomkesh is desperately looking for clues, he gets awestruck when some guy uses any phrase (as there is a clue in it.) and occasionally he disguises too – these are all elements of any detective/ investigation movie. What could have made a difference was the treatment, but sadly Dibakar Banerjee’s low key handling took away the excitement from the film. If the audience aren’t feeling that much thrilled about what happens next, then that’s a scripting failure.

Casting and performances are the main strength of this movie and Sushant Singh Rajput has done a good job in portraying the slightly hesitant and full on enthusiasm detective Byomkesh Bakshy. Rest of the cast looked really apt for the movie with both looks and performances. Anand Tiwari, Swasthika Mukherjee, Divya Menon and Meiyang Chang portrayed the characters nicely. A special mention to Neeraj Kabi for his performance as Dr. Anukul Guha.

As a director Dibakar has kept the movie in a terrain that is comfortable for him. But because of a less sharp writing, his style of making looks quite dull. And if you have some interest in solving the case inside your mind, you can find the (or guess the) villain a little while before Mr. Bakshy. Well that is biggest demerit of this movie that has got quality in other technical aspects like cinematography, production design, costume design etc. Just like he mentioned in an interview, Dibakar hasn’t really tried to showcase too much of visuals of the period.

Overall I would call Detective Byomkesh Bakshy as an average cinema that fails to meet its expectation. As an ardent fan of Mr. Banerjee’s style of film making I don’t want to go liberal with the rating and the mark for the movie is 2.5/5. It is missing excitement.