Buno Haansh (Dir.: Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury; Cast: Dev, Srabanti, Tanushree et al.)
Warning: This review may contain spoilers!
Buno Haansh, director Aniruddha Roy Chowdhury’s latest film starring Dev is based on a story by the popular author Samaresh Majumdar. The storyline follows the trajectory of a guileless young man’s descent into a world of crime and deception.
Amal Kumar Biswas (whose first name translates to clean/ pure), played by Dev, is the younger son of a financially challenged family. A chance encounter with a friend triggers a chain of events where Amal – partly driven by financial demands and partly the lure of easy, big money – gets trapped in a world of men, women and machinations the likes of which he has little idea of. Lacking in the skills and cunning to deal with this sort of world, Amal slips into the abyss faster than he can fathom.
To say any more about the story would spoil the broth.
Buno Haansh is a film which is in some parts a thriller and in some parts a drama. It is pretty slick and gripping when it is a thriller, with the cinematography being excellent and the sequences fast-moving. It is when it comes to the drama bits where Buno Haansh could have been better. The inter-character interactions could have been scripted better. Amal’s relation with his fiancee Sohag (played by Srabanti) and his family come out half-baked. Sohag’s character lacks depth and hence remains unrelatable despite Srabanti’s best efforts. In comparison, Tanushree emerges as the more attractive female lead, though she seems to be a bit aware of the camera at times. In the bit roles, Sudipta Chakraborty (as Amal’s sister-in-law) and Shankar Chakraborty deserve special mention for breathing credibility into their characters.
Coming to Dev, his biggest strengths remain his physique and his handsome, innocence-laden face. His non-verbal acting is very good and he can convey every emotion from embarassment to turbulence, from fear to care superbly with his expressions and body language. However, it is when he has to speak that he can be mediocre. It could be his lines to blame at times, but somehow his dialogue delivery lacks conviction too. If he can work on this aspect, it could take his performances to a whole new level.
In summary, Buno Haansh is quite a watchable film with some good performances and a story which is relevant for most of us, albeit with our own parallels.
