From Bhooter Bhobishyot to Aparajito, nods to the legendary filmmaker Satyajit Ray have been an integral part of Anik Dutta’s cinema. And Joto Kando Kolkatatei is Dutta’s most explicit homage to Ray, presented under the guise of a detective mystery.

The end product, however, is less of a gripping thriller and more of an indulgent nostalgia piece that often feels flat.

Joto Kando Kolkatatei borrows liberally from Ray’s Feluda universe, particularly Gorosthane Sabdhan. But this is not a Feluda story in the strict sense. The story follows Saba (Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed), a young woman from Dhaka tracing her family’s past in Kolkata. Her search for roots leads her into the company of Toposmitro aka Topshe (Abir Chatterjee). Together, the duo embark on a riddle-laden chase involving graveyards, faded photographs, and a mysterious painting.

On paper, this premise has the charm of a Feluda novel. In execution, though, the riddles never generate real tension. The solution to the core mystery can be worked out very easily. You can sense the twists long before they arrive. What should have been a taut, edge-of-the-seat pursuit is instead a leisurely ride a series of predictable checkpoints connected with Feluda stories.

For a film billed as a detective adventure, the lack of genuine suspense is its biggest undoing. By the second half, when the story hinges on the fate of a painting, the film has already surrendered any hope of surprise. At a little over two hours, the pacing is sluggish.

Abir Chatterjee is the film’s stabilising force. But for an actor who has by now played every possible sleuth in the Bengali literary world, this role hardly gives him enough meat. Bangladeshi actress Quazi Nawshaba Ahmed comes across as patchy. She is spirited in parts but struggling to evoke the emotional urgency in most scenes.

Among the supporting actors, Rik Chatterjee impresses as the younger version of Saba’s grandfather.

What rescues Joto Kando Kolkatatei from complete tedium is Soumya Ray’s cinematography that lets the audience rediscover Kolkata — from Park Street’s colonial remnants, to the gravestones at St. John’s Church. The city becomes the true protagonist. The music, too, does more heavy lifting than the story. Debojyoti Mishra delivers a background score that works overtime to sustain tension.