FELUDA PHEROT Season 1: For many Bengalis, Ray’s Feluda is an emotion. Set in 1977 in Hazaribagh, this caper has a all-new star cast of Tota Roy Chowdhury (Feluda), Anirban Chakrabarti (Jatayu) and Kalpan Mitra (Topshe). Dhritiman, Arindam ably support. Rishi Kaushik delivers a brilliant performance. The movie revolves around the mysterious fugitive royal Bengal tiger named Sultan and the subsequent death of eminent lawyer Mahesh Chowdhury. Editng is not crisp and the movie is extremely slow-paced. If you are looking for an edge-of-the-seat thriller you would be mighty disappointed thanks to the languid pace. The background score incorporates Ray’s legendary compositions and the opening song sung by Anupam is also good. Feluda wears garish pan-stick makeup and this makes him look effeminate. Ray conceived Feluda as a tall and handsome swashbuckling brainiac but Tota comes across as a softie. Anirban Chakrabarti is top-notch as Jatayu. Kalpan Mitra has limited screen time as Topshe. The VFX effects for creating the tiger did not impress much. The scene where the tiger crosses the road without pouncing on Jatayu and Topshe looks unreal. Another scene where Rishi Kaushik tames the tiger lacks cinematic finesse. The movie depicts the book “Chinnamastar Abhishap” word by word and that becomes its biggest undoing. Overall, a nice one-time watch.
AninditaRoyMusings 