Detective Byomkesh Bakshy | Bollywood Film Reviews

Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay was highly inspired by the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and his aide John Watson (creation of famous British author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle). His inspiration lead him to create Byomkesh Bakshi, a detective who loves himself to be called Satyanveshi (the seeker of the truth), and his aide Ajit Kumar Banerjee. The original writings by Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay is in Bengali, and it is eventually translated in many other languages.

The popularity of Byomkesh lead these fictional stories to be adapted into various other media like TV Serial and Films as well.

On Doordarshan there was a fantastic TV Serial named Byomkesh Bakshi aired in 1993 introducing Byomkesh to the large Hindi speaking audience.

Dibakar Banerjee, the director of Khosla Ka Ghosla (which is a nice movie, by the way) have decided to make a Hindi movie in the same arena. He signed in Sushant Singh Rajput to play the protagonist in the movie. If you are Byomkesh fan (or have idea about his cases) you will surely be able to draw the parallels between the first case of Byomkesh – Satyanveshi – and this film.

Book Plot:

Set up in Calcutta during 1942 this movie explores the first adventure of Byomkesh Bakshi. The movie content is setup in the background of World War. Byomkesh is just fresh out of college. He was approached by Ajit Banerjee to find his missing father. Earlier Byomkesh was not interested in the case, but eventually he got to know that Ajit’s father was a genius chemist and suspected that the case may not be simple kidnapping case. With his increased interest Byomkesh follows the trail and the dark underworld of Calcutta is explored upon him.

The events leads him to Dr. Anukul, a fellow living in his mess who have Chinese roots. He then visits China Town and found that Calcutta Police is also combing that area to solve some other case.

Byomkesh is an amateur and he is still learning. And while learning he makes some mistakes also. At the end of the tale you will see that some of his actions are actually inspired by the antagonist.

Rest of the movie is better to explore on screen.

As mentioned earlier, those who are familiar with Byomkesh Bakshi related literature (or viewed Hindi TV Serial Byomkesh Bakshi) will find a very few surprises in the story. They will also be able to get the suspense very early. The movie builds up pretty well and if you are not familiar with the story, the suspense will come as a surprising element for you; and if you are already familiar with the story then also it won’t disappoint you.

The makers have recreated Calcutta (now Kolkata) of that time pretty nicely. So much attention is paid in details of each element, be it belong to movie set(s), wardrobe or anything else. The director never try to show off his skills by overcoming the aspects of the story, and it works pretty well in favor of the movie.

Some songs (or shall we say rhymed dialogs played in background) build movie tempo effetively. Actually you can compare many aspects of the film with James Bond movies and this attribute belongs to it. The background music is pretty convincing. There is no place for traditional Hindi movie songs in the film. And the makers haven’t tried implanting them forcefully.

In terms of acting, Neeraj Kabi tops the list. He is convincing as the antagonist. Sushant Singh Rajput tries hard to justify the role he is given, and he succeeds upto a large extent. Anand Tiwari surprises as Ajit Banerjee. Actually you may not have imagined him in this role, if you have seen his earlier roles. He is good. There are many actors who played small/large roles in the movie and most of them are not less than a perfect choice.

Large part of the movie is filmed in dark. And for majority of audience it doesn’t seem to go well. Though, the director have done it as per the demand of script, if he could have avoided too much darkness, the effect would have been much better for sure.

Also the movie ends in a way that you can expect a sequel of the same. (If you have followed Byomkesh Literature or TV Serial, you already know it, as a successive story comes following this tale). Though, the movie was not a commercial super-hit, the makers seems motivated to follow up Byomkesh series. As some news suggest that the second part of the movie is already started working on.

Detective Byomkesh Bakshi is well made film. Crime thriller / murder mystery lovers will definitely like this film.

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