Chittagong Movie Reviews

Read the Chittagong reviews here..

Ratings:3.5/5 Reviewer: Taran Adarsh Site:Bollywood Hungama

Restructuring the long-gone era is an arduous task. It's also demanding, laborious and strenuous. Most importantly, the person taking on the mantle of narrating a real-life story ought to do wide-ranging research on the subject matter. There cannot be shortcuts. Besides comprehensive detailing that goes into making the story come alive on the big screen, the raconteur also needs to ensure that the cinematic interpretation is defined and based on facts.

Bedabrata Pain's CHITTAGONG takes you back to the 1930s. Around two years ago, Ashutosh Gowariker's KHELEIN HUM JEE JAAN SEY had traversed the same path, tracing the uprising in Bengal. A group of school boys and a young woman, led by a school teacher, took on the British Raj. Unfortunately, their plans went askew, but their courage and valor motivated freedom fighters in multitude.

Ratings:4/5 Reviewer: Saibal Chatterjee Site:NDTV

A little-known but hugely significant chapter of the Indian freedom struggle constitutes the narrative kernel of Chittagong, scientist-turned-filmmaker Bedabrata Pain's directorial debut. As far as period sagas go, this is anything but average fare.

This simple, sure-handed and easy-flowing film strikes no false notes, nor does it fall prey to any creative ambiguity. The director knows exactly what he wants to mine from the pages of history and he extracts just the right degree of dramatic energy from the tale of intense conflict that lies at the heart of the film.

Pain's approach to the rousing saga of a band of gutsy men and boys who had the British rulers on the run, if only briefly, in Chittagong in the early 1930s – the selfsame story that Ashutosh Gowariker brought to the screen in Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey far less effectively – is refreshingly realistic and clear-headed.

Ratings:3/5 Reviewer: Raja Sen Site:Rediff

"Bharat chhod! Bharat chhod!" The fury of the quit-India chant is what stands out the most in Bedabrata Pain's inevitably rousing Chittagong, the words here spat out with profane indignation, diametrically unlike the nearly sing-song "chhodo" request we're acquainted with at school.

"Bha-Rat Chhod" is the cry, mirroring in tone and metric structure that most common of North Indian curses (where Mother stands in for Motherland.) Makes sense. Why would revolutionaries bother with politeness? Or formality?

Reviewer: Nandini Ramnath Site:Livemint

Bedabrata Pain’s Chittagong is a well-documented labour of love. The scientist-turned-director struggled to raise finances for his movie about the armed uprising of 1930, eventually investing the royalty earned from one of his patents; the period film was stuck in the cans after being completed in 2010; Ashutosh Gowariker’s Khelein Hum Jeen Jaan Sey, based on the same incident, beat Pain to the cinemas the same year. Chittagong has finally arrived in theatres, and one thing is immediately apparently: if there was only one Hindi movie that had to be made on the armed revolt against the British and its aftermath, it is this one.

Ratings:3/5 Reviewer: Shabana Ansari Site:DNA

A chapter in Indian history forms the backdrop of director Bedabrata Pain’s debut which chronicles the struggle of a bunch of freedom fighters in undivided Bengal.

Based on true but lesser-known incidents in the 1930s, the movie is about a group of teenagers — led by school teacher Surya Sen (Manoj Bajpayee) — who gave an unequal but brave fight to the British authorities in Chittagong (now in Bangladesh).

Ratings:3.5/5 Reviewer: Khalid Mohamed Site:Deccan Chronicle
It’s a lost generation perhaps. Fired by the ideal to exterminate the British colonialists, a group of boys and girls, barely out of their teens, gave up their homes, families and eventually their lives during the freedom struggle. It’s a vital chapter in history, set in an area of tumult (now in Bangladesh), which tends to be undervalued, if not overlooked.

Defying movie bazaar norms, Chittagong co-written and directed by the NASA scientist Bedabrata Pain, is an example of technical style yoked to solid content. Although completed on a lean budget, the film’s look is impressive and the screenplay is focused on a young revolutionary who would rather die than buckle in before the British Raja sahebs.

Although Ashutosh Gowariker’s Khelein Hum Jee Jaan Sey, also an important work, dealt with the same subject, Bedabrata’s approach and interpretation are entirely different. In Chittagong delayed in the release because of the thematic-clash with Gowariker’s effort, the relationship between Jhunku,an idealistic boy (Delzad Hiwale) and the subversive schoolteacher Surya Sen (Manoj Bajpayee), is infinitely more complex. It would seem that the boy is almost hypnotised by the teacher who leads the cause with single-minded determination.