Tag Archives: Sidhhartha Chatterjee

Badshahi Angti (2014)

Written by – Abhikendu Deb Roy.

Ratings: 3/5.

They say, when you watch a film, you must never draw comparisons to the novel it has been adapted from, nor should you keep the previous installments in mind.

But, inevitably, when you hear the nostalgic tunes composed by the master Satyajit Ray himself, you are bound to get reminded of the frames from Rajasthan and Benaras as portrayed by Ray.

Director Sandip Ray is back with another adaptation of his father’s detective novel series ‘Feluda‘ with a totally new Feluda in Abir Chatterjee and a fresh face Sourav Das in Topshe, the sleuth’s nephew and stalwart partner.

It is a big challenge to fill in the shoes of Soumitra Chatterjee and Sabyasachi Chakraborty, as the famous sleuth Prodosh Chandra Mitter. Expectations were soaring high from him, but Abir is inconsistent as the private investigator.

Badshahi-angti-posterOne of the major notable characteristics of Feluda is that his eyes does the majority of the talking. Unfortunately, Abir falls short in that aspect. Feluda is a far more composed character with an amicable personality.

After the likes of Siddhartha Chatterjee, Saswata Chatterjee, Parambrata Chatterjee and Shaheb Bhattacharjee, newcomer Saurav Das handles the role of Topshe and disappoints us to the core. He looks the part but his dialogue delivery and expressions are worth criticizing, so much so that he becomes irritating and superfluous. Topshe was clearly missed in this installment of the series.

Apart from them, the rest of the cast are worth a watch, with Paran Banerjee impressing us with his new look.

Shot vastly in Lucknow, cinematographer Sirsha Ray handles the frames nicely and brings to us the Lucknowi feel through his lens and vision. The historical monuments like the Bara Imambara looks amazing the film, but the Bhool Bhulaiyya within the Bara Imambara could have been shot in a wiser manner.

Also, the special effects look very amateurish and surely needed a better supervision. Subroto Roy manages to keep the film crisp and tight with his editing and wraps up the film within 110 minutes.

I cannot and I should not comment about the ‘Feluda Theme’ as it still gives me goosebumps, no matter how much remastered it may be. The rest of the background score by Sandip Ray is ho-hum and could have been improvised upon to make the pace of the film alive.

badshahi-angti-poster2Sandip Ray tries hard to recreate magic on screen yet again with his father’s legendary works, but he somehow cannot keep up to the expectations, specially with a newer and a weaker cast.

The script is a rip-off of the ‘Badshahi Angti’ novel by Ray. So it doesn’t really give us a chance to find flaws and it is one of the major reasons that this Christmas release may and will find takers at the box-office.

Sandip Ray keeps the suspense evolving till the last reel of the film unlike his previous installments and tries to instigate the audience to use their grey cells.

Final Verdict: There is always a sense of nostalgia when it comes to Feluda. So you might give this a watch this year-end just for the master’s story. Jatayu (read: Santosh Dutta), you were severely missed

 
 
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