Byomkesh Bakshy not the traditional Bollywood hero, took a calculated risk: Dibakar Banerjee

“Bollywood has a tradition of seeing young men in a certain way. The cool quotient of this guy is that he is very ordinary. He is a not a fashionable person. So, we took a huge but calculated risk and pushed Byomkesh’s look and styling which Hindi film audience has never seen.

“Yet the feel of the film is very contemporary, I really hope it catches on,” Dibakar said during the trailer launch of the film here last night.

Set in Kolkata of 1940s, the film shows a young Byomkesh embarking on his first case while the metropolis is in the grip of World War II.

The director, who has earlier helmed films like ‘Khosla Ka Ghosla’, ‘Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!’ and ‘Shanghai’, said that the global conflict has an important role in the movie.

Watch trailer: Sushant Singh Rajput brings life to ‘Detective Byomkesh Bakshy’

“During the World War II, the nature of crime changed in Kolkata. There were air raids and there were Japanese spies as well. And that point, Kolkata was a port city so there were naturally more crimes. In this scenario, a young detective Byomkesh Bakshy came to solve a mystery – his first case,” he said.

Dibakar has been working on the film for last four years and he said after spending several sleepless nights, he is glad to see that the love of his labour has come out good.

The Yash Raj Films and Dibakar’s co-production also stars Bengali actress Swastika Mukherjee and will hit theatres on April 3.