Review of Bengali movie "The Royal Bengal Tiger"

Now a days the subject and treatment of Bengali movies are changing very much, corporate houses are coming to invest their money in Bengali movies and "The Royal Bengal Tiger" is one such movie.
From the beginning its main attraction is that the story has been written by famous director and story writer Neeraj Pandey, the man behind the successful Hindi movies like "A Wedenesday" and "Special Chhabbees". 
The reference of these two movies is there in this movie too, like "A Wednesday" this is also about a common  man's story who takes stand to fight against his own problems and like "Special Chhabbees" it also continues with the idea "asli power dil me hoti hai"  here the same idea has been twisted a bit to "fear is just a state of mind".

This is a story of a common middle class government employee Abhirup Banerjee, who has a happy family , a beautiful wife, a lovely son. He has good reputation in his office , he is about to be promoted.Apart from that he has life insurance policies, gratuity, his own house of around 10 crore, in a word his life is totally secure. But gradually when the story proceeds we come to know he is a man scared to his bone with his own insecurities, his fear and his problems. His sly office colleague wants to sabotage his job, his tenant is not ready to pay the rent rather the tenant misbehaves with him even in front of his wife, some roadside guys tease and molest his office colleague cum friend in their way to office. But he never says a word against all this injustice out of fear. Suddenly one day his childhood friend Anjan (Jeet) comes back to his life and makes him understood that fear is nothing but just a state of mind and he gives Abhirup the courage to be a tiger to fight his own battle. With the motivation from Anjan, Abhirup gets the courage and start fighting against the odds of his life which leads him to something unwanted with a shocking revelation.

The screenplay looks very interesting in the first half when the audience is introduced with Abhirup and his day to day life.But at the moment Anjan enters in his life the screenplay starts loosing its grip. The way Abhirup tries to solve his problems looks very unrealistic which arises too many questions in the audiences mind. Although the questions are answered in the final revelation but till that time its little late. Another weak point is that the suspense can be easily guessed long ago before the climax.

In spite of this shortcomings in the second half the movie is quite engaging because of its fine actors lead by Abir Chatterjee. After a long time Abir Chatterjee is doing a lead character and he has utilized this opportunity totally to showcase his talent. Throughout the whole film he looks and behaves like Abhirup(his screen character). His body language, mannerism, costumes, dialogue delivery everything looks perfect for his character. Its high time that Abir gets more such opportunities not the small friendly appearances in multi starrers.

But the bad thing is that to make it commercially successful the movie is promoted as a Jeet starring film more. Yes Jeet is there as Anjan but his screen time is very less. He is not doing his favorite activities on screen for which he is more popular, like fighting the goons or dancing to the hit tunes or mouthing heavyweight dialogues. But still he behaves and acts larger than life the way he use to do in his kind of commercial cinema. Still his over the top acting is justified as his character is larger than life as per the script, so he looks okay on screen. But in comparison to Abir Chatterjee he looks very weak performer.

There are two ladies in Abhirup's life first one is his wife Aparna (Priyanka Sarkar) and second one is his office colleague cum friend Nandini (Shraddha Das). Priyanka Sarkar has acted well in the limited scope of her character. While Shraddha Das looks very nice and glamorous in her sarees. Shraddha has acted in so many south Indian and Hindi movies earlier but it is her first Bengali movie and she has acted well. If she continues to choose good roles in different type of Bengali movies then she can shape up her career well in Bengali movies.
Apart from that Shantilal has done good job in the negative role Dipankar, the office colleague of Abhirup. Kharaj Mukherjee is brilliant in his three four scene role as Abhirup's tenant.

As a director Rajesh Ganguly has made a good movie but he needs to know its not necessary to show Howrah Bridge ,Ganga ghat , Victoria maidan to show Kolkata.
The technical team has done an okay job. The cinematography is nice. The stunts are just okay. The background score is good. 
There is no scope for songs still two songs have been forced in the story but the good thing is that the songs are in background. Although the songs are not the highlight of the movie and not even popular so it does not adds any value to the movie.

Overall it is a well made movie with good intention and the treatment is very refreshing for any Bengali movie. But the climax is a bit predictable and for some audiences it might not work well, but you will be able to relate with the daily life and fears of a common man. It can be watched once and for Abir Chatterjee's fans it is a must watch.