A Half-Baked Chase That Should've Been Left Unwritten
In the ever-thinning air of Bengali cinema where content is either borrowed or botched, Mrigaya: The Hunt crashes in like a self-important sermon disguised as a thriller. Billed as a gritty cop drama revolving around the murder of a Sonagachi-based prostitute, what we get instead is a muddled, pretentious, and painfully overacted excuse of a film that confuses loudness with intensity and melodrama with meaning.
The premise, though loosely inspired by a real case, is squandered by a screenplay that feels more like a stitched-together police diary than a compelling narrative. Debashish Dutta, an actual cop turned writer, might know how to file FIRs - but storytelling, clearly, is not his jurisdiction.
Ritwick Chakraborty as OC Debanjan Dutta walks through the film with a face frozen in righteous constipation. Vikram Chatterjee, supposed to bring youthful edge as SI Animesh, is so wooden you could carve a desk out of him. Anirban Chakrabarti, stuck in a role that demands intensity but offers none, ends up becoming a caricature of the brooding tough guy. Rezwan Sheikh as the Anti-Dowry officer? Blink and you'll miss both him and his relevance.
The female characters fare even worse. Priyanka Sarkar's Chhaya is underwritten to the point of invisibility, while Ananya Bhattacharya's Chameli/Annapurna is reduced to a set of stereotypes so tired, even the camera seems bored of framing her.
Director Abhirup Ghosh tries to sprinkle style - with unnecessary slow-mo shots, heavy background scores, and dimly lit interrogation rooms - but the film reeks of TV serial aesthetics dressed up in Netflix-wannabe clothes. The dialogues are cringeworthy, the twists are laughably predictable, and the so-called "hunt" feels more like a lazy stroll through a moral lecture.
By the time the film stumbles to its underwhelming finale, it's hard to care who killed whom - because the real victim here is pacing, nuance, and basic storytelling sense.
Verdict: "Mrigaya: The Hunt" is less a thriller and more a sluggish public service announcement, better suited as a police recruitment ad than a feature film. Avoid like a bad alibi.
⭐ 1 out of 5.
The premise, though loosely inspired by a real case, is squandered by a screenplay that feels more like a stitched-together police diary than a compelling narrative. Debashish Dutta, an actual cop turned writer, might know how to file FIRs - but storytelling, clearly, is not his jurisdiction.
Ritwick Chakraborty as OC Debanjan Dutta walks through the film with a face frozen in righteous constipation. Vikram Chatterjee, supposed to bring youthful edge as SI Animesh, is so wooden you could carve a desk out of him. Anirban Chakrabarti, stuck in a role that demands intensity but offers none, ends up becoming a caricature of the brooding tough guy. Rezwan Sheikh as the Anti-Dowry officer? Blink and you'll miss both him and his relevance.
The female characters fare even worse. Priyanka Sarkar's Chhaya is underwritten to the point of invisibility, while Ananya Bhattacharya's Chameli/Annapurna is reduced to a set of stereotypes so tired, even the camera seems bored of framing her.
Director Abhirup Ghosh tries to sprinkle style - with unnecessary slow-mo shots, heavy background scores, and dimly lit interrogation rooms - but the film reeks of TV serial aesthetics dressed up in Netflix-wannabe clothes. The dialogues are cringeworthy, the twists are laughably predictable, and the so-called "hunt" feels more like a lazy stroll through a moral lecture.
By the time the film stumbles to its underwhelming finale, it's hard to care who killed whom - because the real victim here is pacing, nuance, and basic storytelling sense.
Verdict: "Mrigaya: The Hunt" is less a thriller and more a sluggish public service announcement, better suited as a police recruitment ad than a feature film. Avoid like a bad alibi.
⭐ 1 out of 5.
- MovieB-7
- 2 jul 2025