Guptodhoner Sondhane Review: Hardy Boys in Bengal
Director: Dhrubo Banerjee
Cast: Abir Chatterjee, Arjun Chakrabarty, Ishaa Saha, Rajatava Dutta, Kamaleshwar Mukherjee, Goutam Ghose, Arindam Sil, Sibaji Bandyopadhyay
Runtime: 133 minutes
RBN Rating: 2.5/5
First things first. Treasure hunt stories, as a thumbrule, should always concentrate on the job at hand: a serious hunt for the hidden wealth. And that’s where Guptodhoner Sondhane stumbles from the word go and fails to rise in the next two hours and 13 minutes. The final product is more of a pulp fiction Hardy Boys story with some usual thrills, like masked men, shady characters roaming around in a rundown palace at the dead of night, and underground passageways thrown in.
What’s worse is that the romantic subplot of Abir (Arjun) and Jhinuk (Ishaa), often takes precedence over the main story. Abir seems more interested in wooing Jhinuk rather than a determined hunt for the buried family treasure. Arjun appears juvenile in every other scene and it seems he is yet to shrug off his Gaaner Oparey and Bapi Bari Jaa hangover.
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Subarna Sen aka Sonada (Abir) tries hard to fit in as the Oxford-returned historian and succeeds to an extent. But the nonchalance in his dialogue delivery still remains the biggest turnoff in film after film.
Rajatava Dutta as the main antagonist and bounty hunter Dashanan Daw is perhaps the only saving grace in Guptodhoner Sondhane and manages to bind the film together. Kamaleshwar, who was brilliant in the 20-minute short film Shoshibhushon, is wasted in a rather typical role that offers limited scope.
As regards the story, Harinarayan Singha Roy (Goutam), the last scion of a zamindar family, leaves behind a series of riddles for his nephew Abir to decipher, which leads to a buried Mughal treasure. Abir, short of the intellect in unravelling the clues, takes Sonada to their ancestral house, and along with Jhinuk, gets cracking on the treasure trail with Dashanan hot on their heels.
Guptodhoner Sondhane is everything what an adventure heist film should not be. The story is far too simple, the comedy is forced, and even the action scenes appear more comic than actionable.
Nothing can resurrect a film which is half-heartedly written. Twenty minutes into it and the end is predictable. The climax offers no twists or surprises.
Bickram Ghosh’s music is worthy but the Rabindrasangeet is hugely out of place.
There’s another major flaw in Guptodhoner Sondhane—naming one of the protagonists with the name of one of the actors. A number of people in the audience were left confused with ‘Abir’. But that is likely to continue as the production house has already announced the sequel in the franchise.
But Guptodhoner Sondhane may perform well at the box office with all the branding it has got.