January 26, 2011 (Sampurn Wire): The Sundance Film Festival has begun and while many have wondered why the remake rights of the British-Indian film The Bengali Detective was bought by the Fox Searchlight Pictures, after screening of the documentary. These questions might have been put to rest. Director Phil Cox had gone through India searching for the right person who could be the intrepid yet coy sleuth.

Rajesh became the protagonist of the documentary who moves to the big city from a village to be part of a PI agency. But while he is struggling to overcome his road blocks while solving his first ever murder case, Rajesh is still trying to keep his spirits up, for his loving wife who suffers from diabetes. Rajesh has three cases to solve, fake shampoos causing the Indian goods to lose out their money to the counterfeit products. The next is a triple homicide, where the police are not even eager to accept it as a murder case and in the third case a wife of a middle-class family hires Rajesh to investigate his adulterous abusive husband.

In reality, the cases are just the smaller picture of the things that goes on in the sub-continent, where counterfeit products are causing havoc loss in the Indian market; over seventy percent of murder cases remain unsolved and the domestic violence is just all too common. Cox finds the right protagonist Rajesh who navigates his way through all the puzzles of Kolkata and the city. Phil even intersperse the narrative with the personal tragedies and the drama of the city and the life but in a light hearted comical way. The film is heartwarming and has a character to it.

--Sampurn Wire