Review of Bengali movie Amanush 2

"Amanush 2" is not a continuation of its prequel neither in terms of story nor in terms of film making style.The only similarity is that the production house, Director and the leading man is same. Just like "Amanush" ,this is also a story of a man dealing with his psychological problems but this time he is not doing all the inhuman activities to get his lady love rather he is doing all these in search of a new identity to leave his past behind.

The story begins with Raghu a young teenager in Siliguri. His life became hell when his father committed suicide after knowing about the extra marital affair of his mother.To take revenge he kills his mother and he has to go to the remand home until he becomes adult Raghu (Soham Chakraborty). After coming out from jail Raghu tries to make a new start in his life but no one is ready to give him a fresh chance due to his past records. In such a situation Raghu gets an unpredictable opportunity during a bus journey from Siliguri to Kolkata, when his co-passenger Salim dies in the bus accident. Raghu takes Salim's identity proofs and decides to get a fresh start in his life being Salim, who was going to join Medical college in Kolkata. In his college Raghu who is Salim now befriends with Ashok (Anindya Chatterjee), a rich kid who likes to enjoy everything in life but study. Salim and Ashok starts to live in a same apartment where he becomes friend with Ashok's girlfriend Riya (Payel Sarkar) and his other friends. After becoming Salim , Raghu starts dreaming about a good future but is it possible to live whole life with this fake identity? Will it be possible for him to hide his past from his friends? Up to how much extent he has to go to survive with his false identity, that develops the rest of the story.

It is a south Indian movie's remake but unlike other commercial Bengali movies the treatment is more subtle here, there is no routine song and dance and foreign location sequences in this film rather the look and feel is more realistic. But the thing which is missing in this realistic set up is an authentic story. The basic idea of the story is still reliable but it has been stretched a bit too much which make it highly unconvincing. In the first half it took too much time to setup the story which makes it very slow in pace. Although the story picks up in the second half after a surprising twist just before the interval. But again in second half after a point of time it looses its track. The actions taken by the protagonist looks totally confusing and  it is very tough to identify with whatever he is doing with his fake identity.

As a director Rajib Kumar has changed his style of film making a lot in comparison to his earlier masala entertainers. He has succeeded too some extent in the new approach of story telling making the look of the film more believable. But he looses points in developing a gripping story and characters.  We hope to see more improvement in his movies in future.

Among the cast members there is no doubt it is a one man show by Soham Chakraborty. He has got the best role to showcase his acting talent and he has done a fair job as the psychologically challenged protagonist. He has handled the grey character effortlessly. 
Among the rest of the cast it is Anindya Chatterjee has shined in probably the best role of his character so far.Here he has got a character which is more than just a friend of the leading man and he has utilized this chance in the best possible way within his limits.
Rajesh Sharma appears in a cameo in last 20 minutes and he lefts his impression in the small screen time. Payel Sarkar has nothing much to do apart from looking glamorous.

As the movie has skipped the routine song and dance sequences so there is not much scope of music in the film. Still the songs in background and background score works for the movie. It is not a kind of movie where technical team is extraordinary but there job is okay.

Overall it is an average film which may look boring to commercial movie lovers because of lack of commercial ingredients. For the audiences who are looking something beyond just commercial movies it can worth a watch in spite of its unconvincing plot because of the wonderful performance of the leading man.

Review of Bengali Film Bitnoon

Abhijit Guha and Sudenshna Roy have made their own brand of films in recent past where they made light hearted films about urban people, for urban audiences. Sometime they got success too but not every time. Last year they had tried to focus on the subject of post marital issues, after having kids how the equation between husband and wife changes, in the film "Biye Not Out". It did not worked at all may be that's why they came back with another movie "Bitnoon" with almost similar topic only with more reliable actors and some added glamour.

The subject of "Bitnoon" is very cliche it has been told so many times in so many movies in different languages. When a married couples love life or better said sex life goes stagnant as

the wife gets busy with household works and kids then the husband have to look out for an extra marital affair to add some spice to his boring life. Here it is the story of a not so young married couple Rahul (Ritwick Chakraborty) and Mousumi (Gargi Roychoudhury) who are happily married with a school going kid. But after having their son they don't get much scope to have sex. As a result both of them are frustrated but still their life is going on as they have no other option. But one day Rahul gets an opportunity to make an exciting friendship with an attractive girl Rusha (Sayani Ghosh). Very soon their friendship becomes something more than just friendship and they start liking each other. Rusha is all aware of Rahul's marital status from the beginning, but still she moves on with the relationship. After spending some more time with Rahul she start feeling the need of marriage with Rahul. Now Rahul is in a dilemma to chose between his family and responsibility or his love for Rusha. Finally  in the climax he comes to a conclusion which is very cliche and politically correct and everyone have seen that so many times. Although there is a twist in the tale in the final reel but that too is not totally unpredictable and does not add any extra value.

No matter how cliche the story is but still there are lots of scope of entertainment and lots of script writers have made hilarious comedy out of extra marital affair stories but unfortunately screenplay writer Padmanava Dasgupta could not do that with the script of "Bitnoon".Except for the opening sequence, from the beginning the story looks very tired

and boring. The monotonous marital life of Rahul and Mousumi makes the audiences more bore than the protagonists on the screen. Even after addition of the character of Rusha people expect to have some funny moments but it is missing. Also Rahul and Rusha come close to each other so rapidly that it looks very unconvincing, specially where Rahul is still in love with his wife then why he gets attracted to Rusha so easily and Rusha almost jumps to have an affair with a married man that too without any purpose as if he is not getting any other good guy for having an affair. So the track of Rahul and Rusha looks very much forced. Although there are some funny moments in the second half when Rahul goes for a secret outing with Rusha at a resort , but that too does not stayed long. The climax of course is very cliche and no one cares about the decision taken by Rahul or Rusha because their relationship was not convincing enough from the beginning so no  one is bothered about their future.The dialogues are very ordinary and not funny at all.

As directors Abijit Guha and Sudeshna Roy has done an average job. They have chosen a very old story and also presented in the same way, the way we have seen such stories so many times. It could not be a story of any perfect zone, neither its a comedy nor a serious drama about extra marital relationship. The treatment to the film is very much kind of short films made for television. 

There are three main characters and all the main three leads are dependable actors which is a good thing about the movie. It is refreshing to watch Ritwick Chakraborty in well educated high ranking officer's role otherwise he was too much repetitive as lower middle class para guy type of roles in his last few films. Ritwick has played his part honestly , his fear , his dilemma , his longing for sex looks real on screen. He is a good actor and has done good job in the limited scope of such type cast husband role.
The same can not be said for the leading lady of the film Gargi Roychoudhury. She has played the similar role of a housewife in "Raamdhanu" last year and it looks like she is just doing a continuation of the same role of a housewife busy with husband, kid and household works. In fact a good actress like her who can light up the screen in just a cameo has not been given a good role here. Still she tries to do her job quite well and she looks very natural in her performance.
The spice part of this boring story is Sayani Ghosh. She is very flamboyant , chirpy , bubbly kind of girl with fresh energy just like her onscreen character Rusha. She does her part very well, only in the dancing sequences she looks little fat and her dancing was also not that good provided she play a professional dancer. But if we can overlook that part then she is good in the rest of the movie. Though her character is half baked but with her smart presence and good acting she makes up for that.

The technical team has done just an okay job. Although the film is just 108 minutes but it still looks stretched specially in the first half may be the editor could have done a better job in that case. There are some issue with sound designing too. Every time in the film.when a song is playing on TV, the songs video and and audio does not match. As the songs playing on TV are so much popular that it is difficult to overlook that.
The music has been composed by Raghav-Sudeen duo who have made their debut as music composers. Their first film album has nothing good to offer , the songs has been used in background in the movie and does have any added value in them.

Over all it is just an average movie about the post married life crisis. The film has nothing new to offer. The film can be avoided without any doubt unless you have any other option to spend time or you are a die hard fan of Ritwick Chakraborty. 

Review of Detective Byomkesh Bakshy

Byomkesh Bakshy is a very familiar fictional sleuth for Bengalis all over India and so many directors have tried their own adaptation of Byomkesh from TV series to movies in Bengali. But for the non-bengali audiences the only reference point to Byomkesh is the old TV series featuring Rajit Kapoor as Byomkesh , the smart detective from Calcutta in dhoti kurta. But most of the today's generation have hardly seen that old TV series on DD National. Yashraj films and Dibakar Banerjee have taken a good initiative to bring back the old detective from the pages of literature to the big screen in theaters.

But one thing should be made very clear that although the makers have taken rights of all Sharadindu Bandopadhyay novels about Byomkesh but for the first movie they have used only the backdrop and some leading characters from the original text the rest of the story is not based on any of Byomkesh novel. Dibakar banerjee and Urmi Javekar has written a totally new story in the backdrop of Calcutta in 1943 during the world war II season.

The story traces the journey of Byomkesh Bakshy of becoming a detective from a just passed out college graduate. Unlike other Byomkesh stories, here Byomkesh is not a professional detective rather he is looking for a job of some lecturer to settle in his life. But all of a

sudden, a wannabe author Ajit Banerjee (Anand Tiwari) comes to him with a case of his missing father Bhuvan Banerjee. With some initial curiosity Byomkesh agrees to take the case and starts his investigation. During his investigation he meets lots of suspect persons among them some have some connection to the disappearance of Bhuvan Banerjee. Byomkesh have to figure out among the persons in his suspect list who are actually connected with this issue and how. Doing his further investigation Byomkesh senses the big danger around this conspiracy, it is not just that a person is missing only, their is some large conspiracy around that like opium smuggling, threat from Japan and safety issue of Calcutta. How he solves the mystery and saves his city is the climax.One thing should be told about this story that it is a murder mystery but the revelation at end lacks shock value as if you are a regular to the mystery movies then you can sense who is the culprit much before than Byomkesh. Moreover it deals with so many issues and characters specially in the second half that it becomes too much complicated to keep track of each character so finally when the truth is revealed you are not much bothered about the fate of all the persons associated with it. Still that could have been overlooked if it would have been a bit faster and if there would have been some interesting twists in between. Although the mystery is  not that gripping but it is interesting at some points specially in first half where Byomkesh explains how he got his clues the audiences will like the guessing game. Another good thing is that throughout the film it has been maintained that Byomkesh is a learner,he is intelligent, smart but still he too makes mistakes, even he is not very much comfortable to see blood and this scenes are justified with his character.

As a director Dibakar Banerjee has done a wonderful job. Directing a detective story that too set in a periodic era is a new thing for him and he has shown his brilliance as a director in this new territory. He has carefully created the era and the characters. And we are thankful to him for showing Calcutta in a fresh way unlike the cliche way other Bollywood directors normally shows.

Among the actors it is Sushant Singh Rajput in the title role who has steal the show. After his debut film two years ago Sushant has once again proved himself. His body language, mannerisms are too perfect for the role of Bengali young guy of pre-independent India. With

his wonderful acting he has made his character of a novice detective more believable. Just like his character Ajit who is kind of assistant cum friend to Byomkesh , Anand Tiwari has given superb support. He too has perfectly adapted the old age mannerisms. Anand Tiwari is a very good actor and he hardly gets chance to show his talent in Bollywood films, after his wonderful job in "Go Goa Gone" few years ago, he is superb once again in this movie. We are hopeful if their would be a Byomkesh franchise then we will be able to see more of him. Another actor who shines very well is Neeraj Kabi. Though he is comparatively newer in mainstream movies but he has done a fabulous job as Dr, Anukul Guha, the owner of the hotel where Bhuban used to stay before his disappearance. His performance is very natural except for last few minutes where he unnecessarily does over the top acting. Although it is indeed a mystery why such a good actor need to do such over acting.Bengali actress Swastika Mukherjee has made a confident debut in Hindi movies as the seductress Angooribala Devi. She is very confident in doing skin show and adds glamour to the story. Acting wise she has not much to do but she impresses with her sexy avatar. Another new find Divya Menon has nothing much to do as Satyabadi and she is just functional may be in the next installments we can see more of her as Byomkesh's wife. There are some other actors from Bengal, China, Japan and America who have been perfectly cast as per their role and does a fair job.

The technical team has done a commendable job to recreate the era of 1943 so beautifully.

The research has been done very well and it shows.The story totally syncs with that era and the backdrop or the look and feel never looks like that it is too loud and attention seeking. The cinematography done by Nikos Andritsakis is wonderful. The production design by Vandana Kataria is very realistic, each and every prop has been used wonderfully to give the look and feel of old Calcutta. The costumes designed by Manoshi Nath and Rushi Sharama looks very authentic and the research work shows. Also not to forget Manish Malhotra for giving Angoori Devi the seductive look. The visual effects by Prana studios have also played an important role in recreating the periodic era.

The music which has been mostly used in background is good and goes well with the movie though the experimental use of hard rock in the background may not work for all but its nice to hear something different and experimental.

Overall it is well made film with superb periodic details. The story lacks punches but still with the good performances by the leading cast it can be overlooked. But if you are a die hard fan of Byomkesh created by Sharadindu Bandopadhyay then you should give it a miss as it will be tough for you to accept this version of Byomkesh.