CRITIC'S RATING: 3.5/5
AVG READERS' RATING: 3.5/5
For us, who grew up in ’90s, Jawker Dhan evokes a series of memories. In our childhood, we crushed on Hemedra Kumar Roy’s daredevil detective duos — Bimal and Kumar. Later, we lapped up on the Doordarshan tele-series Abar Jokher Dhan in ’90s. In fact, Roy made cryptography a sassy profession way before Robert Langdon made it popular. Though the charm of Roy’s fantastic adventures fizzled out in its own due course, the reminiscing nostalgia took me to the theatre to watch Jawker Dhan — Bimal-Kumar’s first adventure from Roy’s kitty. And boy, what an introduction it has! Within 10 minutes of the film, it became clear that it’s no hideous special-effect business. With its snazzy script, hilarious dialogues, intelligent heroes and a dapper antihero, you realise Jawker Dhan is here to stay.
Hiranmoy Bose (Kaushik Sen) aka Hirooda, a cryptographer and assistant curator of Indian Museum, is commissioned to decipher a script by one Karali Mukhopadhyay (Sabyasachi Chakraborty). Meanwhile, Kumar (Rahul) finds an old skull with ancient scripture etched on it from his family heirloom. He runs to his friend and Hiranmay’s cousin Bimal aka Jhantu (Parambrata Chatterjee), an anthropometry professor in Presidency University, to decipher the skull code. Hiranmay gets abducted and Bimal and Kumar get hooked to the cryptic messenger on the skull and the duo embarks on a journey to rescue Hiruda and hidden ancient treasure. To add a bit more chaos, another character, Sombhu Gompo (Samidh), gets introduced and the show goes on.
The first half of the film is funny and fast. With quirky dialogues (instant wit like “Harhabhate barabhate chai diye ashi” is truly hilarious), tight script (tells a lot within a short time) and intriguing action sequences, the film is really engaging. But it loses its pace in the second half — partly because the script gets sloppy and the original story too doesn't lead to an interesting conclusion. Like many other old Bengali mystery literature, Joker Dhan too suffers from ‘ki hoite ki hoiya gelo’ syndrome and our director too couldn't rescue the film from that slippery slope.
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