Te3n

John Biswas is in his seventies. Eight years ago his granddaughter was taken, a ransom was paid and the child died anyway. The file was closed, the police forgot, his wife does not speak. John did not forget. Every day he goes to the station carrying notes he has gathered himself and tries to have the case reopened. Around then another child is taken in the city and the method is the same. The inspector who worked the old case is a priest now and has left it behind. Three men come back together around the same matter. Ribhu Dasgupta wrote and directed. Amitabh Bachchan, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Vidya Balan and Sabyasachi Chakraborty are in the cast. It is an Indian production. The film is a remake of a 2013 South Korean thriller and the plot is largely the same. The narrative is set in Kolkata, and the city's rain, trams and narrow streets carry its tone. It opened on 10 June 2016 and did not meet expectations at the box office. The matter it treats is grief that does not end; eight years have passed and for the old man nothing has changed. Bachchan plays the character at the speed of old age and the film never makes him a hero. The narrative keeps its solution for the end, and that solution makes the question morally harder. Nawazuddin Siddiqui plays the former inspector turned priest quietly and at a distance. The ending takes no comfort from finding the culprit. Its limit is pace; the narrative is very slow, the middle drags, and the tension is kept low. Who it is for: viewers who like slow moving crime films and work built on performance. Who it is not for: it is slow, gloomy, and the ending bitter.