Adrienne McKibbins previews the likely Hindi Hit DETECTIVE BYOMKESH BAKSHY

DETECTIVE BYOMKESH BAKSHY (Dibakar Bannerjee, India, 2015) opens around the world on April 3. Hindi cinema expert Adrienne McKibbins has sent a note below about the film and its director.

 

Dibakar Banerjee is one of the new breed of Indian film makers. He is both a director and screenwriter known initially for, Khosla Ka Ghosla (2006) and Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye! (2008), Both these films were critically well received both winning  National Film Awards. In 2010, he made his third film, Love Sex aur Dhokha, where one of the three sub-plots in the movie is loosely based on the infamous 2004 Delhi Multi-Media Messaging Service scandal.

Love Sex aur Dhokha (LSD),which won him critical acclaim was India's first film shot entirely using Digital camera equipment. It is an unforgiving satire on current social mores fuelled by greed and technological media advancement. It's also a continuation of themes in Banerjee's films that try to evaluate and present the dilemmas of the rising middle-class and the nouveau riche that have come into being with Indian's economic boom since the 1990s.

 

In 2012 Shanghai was released  and screened in Australia.  It was again critically acclaimed, and did reasonably at the box office. The film had two versions, an international and an Indian version and is set in a relatively remote area of inland India. It is based on the 1967 Greek novel Z written by Vassilis Vassilikos. An earlier film version of this novel was made by Costa-Gavras.

In between Shanghai and his new film he contributed to the portmanteau film Bombay Talkies along with directors Anurag Kashup and Karen Johar.

His new film is Detective Byomkesh Bakshy, a crime thriller,  co-produced by Aditya Chopra of Yash Raj films.  The film is based on the fictional detective Byomkesh Bakshi created by the Bengali writer Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay.  In a contemporary interpretation of war torn Calcutta during the 1940's, the film follows the first adventure of Byomkesh (Sushant Singh Rajput), fresh out of college, as he pits himself against an evil genius who is out to destroy the world. It's his wits against the most villainous arch criminal the world has seen, in a world of murder, international political intrigue and seduction.

Banerjee  has expressed his desire  to turn Byomkesh Bakshy into a franchise. providing the first film meets expectations. You can watch the trailer here.