Rating: ***
Drishyam is a welcome change of gears for Me Devgn who has been seen doing some insane comedy and action flicks. It is also a refreshing attempt to have a thriller starved audience in the Hindi movie scene being provided some dose of gripping thriller.
The trailer of the movie had already made news on this blog as well as raised a lot of curiosity among the general audience. The movie does not disappoint you but I definitely felt that it could have been better. Drishyam is a remake of a Malayalam film of same name which starred Mohanlal as the protagonist. The Malayalam movie was based on a popular Japanese novel “The Devotion of suspect X”.
Director Nishikant Kamat had already given us a south remake in the form of a decent action film “Force”. Drishyam is however almost a scene by scene copy of the south movie.
The plot of the movie is around a cable operator Vijay (Ajay Devgn) who lives in a small village in Goa with his wife and two daughters. He is just a common man who due to circumstances has to stand up against the law enforcement (Tabu as the IG of Goa), to save his family.
Telling anything beyond this will reveal the core story and may be considered as spoiler.
A perfect thriller is about the treatment and this one wins with most of its thrilling pieces in the second half. You need patience to sit through the dragged first half to reach the exciting second one. But for establishing characters and their traits it is a required slow burn first half.
The cast is almost perfect; Ajay Devgn is an able National award winning actor who has done complete justice to his character of a fourth-failed common man who can do anything to save his family. Tabu is also no doubt another multiple national award winner, who is playing a ruthless cop. She is also on a mission for his family and is ready to break boundaries. Shriya plays the quintessential house wife who is scared but stands by her family firmly.
All the supporting cast does a good job in making this movie a make believe one. The setup is quite real and the police-common man relation of fear and power is to the complete plot.
There isn’t much scope for music but the two songs in the movie do not interrupt the flow but rather establish the emotions undergoing in the movie.
Do not go with huge expectations but still I would say it is completely different from anything that I have seen in the Hindi movies.
To write this article I did some research on the Malayalam cinema and it seems the southern cinema is much more progressive than its Hindi counterpart. Guess we will be seeing more remakes soon if this one clicks in monetory terms.
