Karnasubarner Guptodhon is a third film in the Sona Da franchise which follows the story of the hunt behind the hidden treasures of King Shashanka of the Gaur kingdom. Now I haven’t watched the earlier two films but I could afford to treat this film as an independent one. The story is really enthralling with the right mix of mythology and the treasure hunt at hand. But my problem was with the screenplay which was standing at a little above 2 hours. No, the length of it was not the problem but it surprised me at how safe and timid the writing was!

The drama opens on a decently gripping car chase followed by the introduction of the characters. There was little world building but I have given the film the benefit of doubt as I haven’t watched the earlier two films and so there was no way for me to judge whether the film did need a world building or not. What the drama does well first up is the story of King Shashanka which is narrated through a series of animations. The story was enthralling and definitely did have my attention. But there are no high points in the drama that unfolds at the same wavelength.

One of my biggest issues with the drama was that it wasn’t willing to raise the stakes higher. To give you a small instance, the rockblocks are weak and almost no one from the main cast dies in the drama. It is fairly predictable and just a case of convenient writing. The excitement that was palpable in Karthikeya 2 wherein the audience was always on their toes, is completely missing here. While the mythological information provided throughout the screenplay is good but the events leading up to them are just too simple and vanilla. At no point in the screenplay did I feel that I was completely involved, in fact I did find myself too distracted.

The drama is decently watchable although I did have an issue with its tone as well. The comic elements seemed forced particularly related o e of the protagonists and it was really overdone. What that did was that the tension in the drama was nullified in every scene. Even the obstacles introduced are very childish and something that I did not appreciate much. In a bizarre turn of events, a character(which did seem from an earlier film) randomly popped up towards the end. Yet he was reduced to a caricature as even the final act was underwhelming. In other words, the screenplay was a cleae case of lazy writing whereas the reality is that the story had a lot of potential to be tapped into a lot better.