If you are a thriller lover, you can give Te3n a miss. There have been better thrillers and indeed, this one itself is an official remake of 2013 Korean film, Montage. Many aficionados have confirmed the original has a tightness that is probably missing in the remake.
If you are a Calcutta lover and love seeing this beautiful city in films, its lanes and landmarks lovingly captured on celluloid, you could do better than this. Te3n's producer, Sujoy Ghosh, himself has directed - what I think is - the most bewitching depiction of the city: Kahaani.
If - on the other hand - you love acting, love seeing actors get under the skin of a character and lift the film from where the script leaves it, then you should probably not miss Te3n.
That Amitabh Bachchan is a phenomenal actor is no longer a fact that needs to be repeated. We have also lost count of the number of times he has transformed a mediocre script into a gripping film through his acting. But what still happens rarely is when Bachchan gets the opportunity to metamorphose into a completely different animal from what we have grown accustomed to.
For example, I loved his performance in Sarkar but I also knew that it was not something novel. The swagger, the style of his earlier roles were given a silvery polish and presented with a flourish. However, with a film like Paa, he manages to do something that is outside the grammar and vocabulary of his regular acting. There, he shifted his speech, facial gestures and gait to match that of a thirteen-year old. And that, I think, was an unbelievably brilliant performance.
In Te3n, the way Bachchan gets into the body of a tired, defeated, septuagenarian is again magical. You could argue that he is really playing himself - an seventy-something grandfather. But you have to see his confident body language as India's biggest star and realise how far apart John Biswas of Te3n really is. The loose skin of his neck, the stoop, the gasping to start the scooter, the tired chases, the dropping eyes... it is a defeated man who fills up the scenes in Te3n and that transformation is masterful.
If you are a fan of Amitabh Bachchan, you have probably watched Te3n already. Good choice. As always.
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