When you walk into a film called Raghu Dakat, you expect fire. A bold, gritty dacoit epic. Guns, grit, and intensity. Instead, what you get is a film that starts with promise, flashes some brilliance — and then fizzles out into a frustratingly flat experience.
Let’s get the good out of the way first: Dev is in fine form. He brings conviction, charisma, and just enough emotional heft to make you care. His presence holds the film together when everything else begins to unravel. Anirban Bhattacharya is reliably solid, even though the script doesn’t give him much to chew on. Sohini Sarkar delivers a strong performance, and veterans like Rupa Ganguly bring quiet dignity, although their screen time feels underutilised. Om, sadly, is wasted in a forgettable action scene that does him no justice.
Visually, the film has scale. The cinematography is polished, the sets look grand, and the background score, especially the “Raghu Raghu” theme, lands well. The problem isn’t how Raghu Dakat looks or sounds. The problem is the lack of urgency, the lack of teeth in its storytelling.
The screenplay is the film’s undoing. The first act builds atmosphere but quickly loses steam. There’s no real momentum. Scenes drag. The dacoit angle, which should have been the film’s core energy, is strangely diluted. And when things threaten to pick up, a poorly timed song drops in and pulls the brakes again.
What’s worse — for a film about a notorious dacoit — the action is barely there, and when it is, it lacks intensity. There’s no rawness, no punch. You keep waiting for the film to take off, but it never does.
Raghu Dakat isn’t a bad film. It’s just a deeply frustrating one — because you can see what it could’ve been. Dev gives it everything; the visuals are strong, but the writing falls short. A dacoit film without drama is like a gun without bullets — it might look dangerous, but it never fires.
Watch it for Dev if you must. But lower your expectations. This dacoit doesn’t steal your time — it just wastes it.
