debforit

A good detective story accurately portrays the crime and the logical analysis which eventually reveals it. A "great" detective story is something which goes beyond it.

First, it focuses on the social aspects of the story by describing the characters and the often complex relationships between them. Second, it not only reveals the criminal but also reveals why might he have committed the crime or for that matter what situations might have led (forced) him to commit the crime. Towards the end of a great detective story the reader (viewer) is bound to empathize with the criminal.

This film is a great cinematic version of a great detective story. The acting is excellent. Abir's role as the detective Byomkesh playing battle of wits on one hand, and becoming a dutiful husband back in his home on the other would have made the author (Sharadindu) proud. Shaswata plays a cameo in a short role as Ajit. Generally speaking, the direction and screenplay are good, and cinematography is excellent accurately capturing the period of the early 70s.

The film is not flawless though. The character of Benimadhav is not very well developed. Moreover, what Byomkesh refers to as a Bengali novel was actually a book of poems by Tagore.

Besides these little flaws, the film is almost perfect and is definitely the best Byomkesh film delivered till date.

Talaash (search) was a disappointment in more ways than an entertainer. The movie struck the theaters with a crest of high expectations mainly because it was a long awaited Aamir Khan starrer after the massively successful "3 idiots". However, I can't help saying that the movie failed to live up to the expectations.

The opening scene of the movie is very interesting where a speeding car in the middle of the night is shown to be suddenly dismantled from the road and thrust into the Arabian sea witnessed by a few street dwellers. Police inspector Surjan Singh (Aamir Khan) with his associate Raj Kumar Yadav (Devrath Kulkarni) started investigating this seemingly accidental case involving the death of a film star. The suspense was slowly but surely building up through the disclosure of a blackmailing story. It was revealed that the dead film star was being blackmailed by a pimp, who went there alone on the night of his death to give 2 million bucks to the blackmailer. The blackmailer, who fled to his village was then discovered dead, drowned to death. It was all going well till this point when facts were being revealed through police investigations.

But then suddenly, out of the blue, comes a prostitute girl Rosy (Kareena Kapoor), portrayed in the shades of eternal destitute, suggesting a forced entry into the "business" against her will, abused by her clients and mistreated by the pimps. A responsible cop (Aamir Khan), himself suffering from psychological depressions owing to the lack of a warm relationship with his wife Shreya (Rani Mukerji) due to their loss of only son, falls for this girl and starts meeting him every night in some isolated part of the city by the sea-side.

It is at this point that the film loses its focus. Furthermore, the sub-plot of the dead boy of Surjan and Shreya communicating with a medium living in their neighborhood through séances (or God knows how!), and this fanatic neighbor attempting to persuade the scientific minded and atheist Surjan about the existence of an after-life, was not too convincing and didn't in any way help to the story development.

The film went no where after this. It was revealed that Rosy was a ghost seeking revenge on three of her clients who picked her up from a hotel three years ago, and abandoned her in the middle of the street on which she has now found out ways to emerge out of the blue and inflict enough fear, horror and panic in the minds (and brains?) of the poor drivers (the three clients in sequence) through her macabre and ghastly appearance, so that these drivers are forced to swerve their wheel under the sea.

In the final scene, Aamir Khan is shown to drive the police car himself, carrying along with him a friend of the deceased film star who has now turned out to be the last of the three clients still alive. And then all of a sudden appears Kareena, terrifying Aamir to swerve his car towards the depth of the sea! Not content with this, she also rescues Aamir by unlocking a locked car door from outside!

So, Aamir now starts believing in after life, reads posthumous letters written by his son, reunites with his wife, and lives happily ever after. The story thankfully ended at this point and so did my misery.

To Summarize: An average story which was too slow paced for an attempted thriller... A disappointing climax which let all the suspense built up till the end sink like the Titanic...