Rajeev Khandelwal’s detective film Samrat & Co may be the first detective film of the season but it definitely will leave you than flabbergasted. I agree Bollywood doesn’t produce quality detective films, but director Kaushik Ghatak, who is a Bengali by birth, should have taken some cues from Bengali literature, which is filled with classic cult detective novels—Feluda, Byomkesh Bakshi, etc. The movie has too many flaws to be counted and makes you laugh as to whether a detective, who is supposed to be a sane rational logical person, can do so many mistakes.
You won’t believe this movie review till the interval, as the first half of the film is actually very mysterious and evokes many a meaningful questions in your head. You start the second half of the film on a very high note expecting all your doubts to be cleared and to witness a truly awe-inspiring detective saga, but all you get post the interval is a pot full of mistakes. To name a few, detectives don’t talk much. On the contrary, they speak less and observe more. They think a lot in their minds but never speak it aloud like a Shakespearean soliloquy. Then again a detective murder mystery movie uses numerous characters to confuse the audience till the end as to who the real murderer is, but that’s not the case here. There is definitely a deluge of characters but most of them come for about 30 seconds onscreen and thus you will never have an iota of doubt considering them as the real murderer. And lastly, it is not a compulsion to add a romantic angle in a detective movie. You should understand that a romantic angle in the middle, which makes no sense, diverts the audience’s attention away from the mystery and suspense....
