New York: Brainy, analytical and more interested in the truth than in social niceties, the detective Byomkesh Bakshy is a kind of Bengali cousin to Sherlock Holmes. Like Sherlock, Byomkesh started on the page - the creation of Saradindu Bandyopadhyay (1899-1970), he first appeared in 1932 - and has made the leap to the screen. (He's even the hero of a lesser-known Satyajit Ray film, Chiriyakhana, or The Zoo.)
With Dibakar Banerjee's atmospheric Detective Byomkesh Bakshy! , a Yash Raj production, he now gets the full Bollywood treatment, or perhaps the half-Bollywood treatment. No songs or dances here, only a straight-ahead mystery, set in a 1943 Calcutta of smoke-filled canteens and sign-encrusted streets, elegant public buildings and cramped boardinghouses. (Kudos to the production designer, Vandana Kataria, and the cinematographer, Nikos Andritsakis.)
The Byomkesh here is just starting out as a detective. He is slapped for rudeness, then hired, by Ajit (Anand Tiwari), a young man whose father, a chemist, has gone missing. This sets off a whodunit that involves drug smuggling, patriotism in wartime (ruled by the British, Calcutta is in the path of the Japanese) and a love story made low-key by Byomkesh (a wryly understated Sushant Singh Rajput), a sometimes squeamish, often clueless genius - the kind of fellow who doesn't recognize movie stars or politicians.
Banerjee, who wrote the script with Urmi Juvekar, keeps the pace slow and easy. And with the exception of some intrusively modern music (on an otherwise sharp soundtrack) and a few scenes of hyped-up 21st-century violence, the filmmakers maintain the period flavor, which is the movie's strength.
The twisty story has a kink or two too many, a problem of whodunit plotting rather than of Bollywood excess. And the war comes across here as a kind of heightened backdrop, rather than real crisis. But these aren't fatal deficiencies in a film more attuned to movie-made ideas of history and style than to history itself. "How do middle-class people like us stand up for our country?" Byomkesh asks Ajit. The teasing answer: "We don't. We go to the movies."
Production Notes: Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!Produced and directed by Dibakar Banerjee
Written by Urmi Juvekar and Banerjee
Based on a story by Saradindu Bandyopadhyay
Director of photography - Nikos Andritsakis
Edited by Manas Mittal and Namrata Rao
Music by Sneha Khanwalkar
Production design by Vandana Kataria
Costumes by Manish Malhotra, Manoshi Nath and Rushi Sharma
Released by Yash Raj Films
In Hindi, with English subtitles
Running time: 2 hours 15 minutes
This film is not rated.
With: Sushant Singh Rajput (Byomkesh), Anand Tiwari (Ajit Banerjee) and Swastika Mukherjee (Anguri Devi).
© 2015, The New York Times News Service