Mumbai — Producer-director Dibakar Banerjee, along with lead actor Sushant Singh Rajput, launched the new trailer of Yash Raj Films’ “Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!” at YRF Studios Mar. 9. Rajput, dressed head to toe as Byomkesh Bakshy, made a “vintage” entry along with Banerjee. The pair spoke excitedly about the villain in the movie — Yang Guang.
Guang is the most monstrous gangster from Shanghai, who comes back from the dead and threatens Bakshy, everything and everyone he loves and values, and finally the city of Calcutta (as Kolkata was called then).
The film is based on Saradindu Bandyopadhyay’s well-known and successful fictional detective Byomkesh Bakshy and the story “Satyanweshi.” The movie emerges as a contemporary interpretation of Calcutta during the 1940s. A detective film and adventure thriller mired in deep political intrigue, it pits a young, astute Byomkesh, fresh out of college, against a mega world villain. Bakshy depends more on his intuition and instinct rather than concrete proof to solve the case, while sometimes overstepping the law if needed.
Bakshy is a dhoti-and-socks-wearing private investigator with a dowdy moustache and side-parted hair, but not a timid Bengali. The film — as per Banerjee’s noir sensibility — gives Bakshy his first case where actor Anand Tiwari’s character approaches him because his father has disappeared. Bakshy is convinced that he has been murdered. There are also sword-wielding Chinese villains, called the Green Gang of Shanghai.
Murder and mystery follow as Bakshy also encounters scantily-clad women. Swastika Mukherjee from Bengal is Bakshy’s light-eyed temptress, seducing him while soldiers and sirens pound Calcutta during World War II as it is 1943, which was the peak of the war.
Banerjee claims to be inspired more by the ambience described in pulp detective novels rather than the polite, middle-class Calcutta in the original writing. Aditya Chopra’s and Yash Raj Films’ “Detective Byomkesh Bakshy!” releases April 3 and is written by Urmi Juvekar. Sneha Khanwalkar scores music.