Abhishek Pathak's third chapter in the Hindi franchise skips the bleakness of the Malayalam original and bets everything on a sharp, twist-heavy final act.
Vijay Salgaonkar is back, and so is the tightrope he's been walking since the first film. Drishyam: The Conclusion, directed by Abhishek Pathak, is out now, and the early word from Filmfare's review suggests this one leans on its final stretch to carry the whole film.
Here's the thing worth knowing upfront: this isn't a remake of Drishyam 3, the Malayalam film Jeethu Joseph made with Mohanlal earlier. Pathak had a choice. He could chase that film's darker, more dramatic register, or he could stay inside the world the two Hindi films already built. He picked the second option. Vijay doesn't turn into some lone wanderer operating outside the moral lines the franchise set up. He stays Vijay. Watchful. Calculating. A father first.
According to the review, the opening half takes its time. It sets up the fresh trouble facing the Salgaonkar family without rushing toward the reveals everyone's waiting for. That's a deliberate slow burn, and it pays off once the second half kicks in. The tension builds steadily from there, and the film is careful about what it shows you. You think you've got Vijay figured out. You haven't.
The last 20 minutes, per Filmfare, is where the film actually becomes something. The courtroom face-off between Prakash Raj's Public Prosecutor Indrajith Shetty and Samvedna Suwalka's defence counsel Gayathri Mohan is singled out as the engine of the climax, a proper battle of wits that finally gives Shriya Saran's Nandini room to step out from under the family crisis and do something.
Ajay Devgn, true to form, says very little and lets it carry weight. Jaideep Ahlawat steps into the SP Rajveer Singh Tomar role this time around, a cop sympathetic to Tabu's Meera Deshmukh and her hunt for justice. The review notes Ahlawat brings his own menace without raising his voice, though it also flags, gently, that Akshaye Khanna's screen presence from the previous film is missed. Not a knock on Ahlawat. Just a different kind of aura.
Tabu returns as Meera, still driven by the need for revenge, with Rajat Kapoor playing her husband Mahesh with restraint rather than the active plotting his character leaned into in the original. Ishita Dutta and Mrunal Jadhav are back as the daughters, Kamlesh Sawant returns for a couple of knowingly funny bits as Inspector Gaitonde, and Saurabh Shukla brings his usual gravitas as Murad Ali.
The review's take: this is a cleaner, more contained version of the Drishyam story than Jeethu Joseph's Malayalam take, closer to a PG-13 read on the material, but one that ties its twists together by the end instead of leaving loose threads.
On the numbers side, trade reports note Drishyam: The Conclusion's advance bookings have already crossed the final tally Drishyam 2 managed. Whether that translates into a bigger opening weekend is the next thing to watch.
Be the first to comment
Join the argument. No password, just your email or a passkey.