Only the sluggish pace one has to endure to get there elicits more yawns than yays, notes Sukanya Verma.
IMAGE: Ajay Devgn and Jaideep Ahlawat in Drishyam: The Conclusion.
Key Points
- Drishyam: The Conclusion features Ajay Devgn as Vijay Salgaonkar, who continues to outwit the law, with new challenges posed by Crime Branch officer Rajveer Singh Tomar (Jaideep Ahlawat).
- Despite a strong climatic twist and an attempt to shed its remake tag, the movie has sluggish pacing and a lack of emotional depth or character evolution for Vijay and his family.
- Jaideep Ahlawat’s performance as Tomar is noted for its charisma, though his character’s ultimate impact is deemed disheartening.
Vijay Salgaonkar’s mind hasn’t stopped ticking for over a decade now.
Thinking two steps ahead of the law every living second, he expects the Damocles sword hanging above his head to drop any day and destroy the people he so intently protects. It’s a dysfunctional dynamic to function in but the Salgaonkars don’t mind so long as they survive the storm as a close-knit family. At what cost? The makers of Drishyam do not ask.
Over the course of these 11 years, they’ve started to resemble apparitions going around in circles and conning the cops as a team. The ghost of Sameer Deshmukh’s unresolved mystery continues to loom large over the franchise, which arrives at its conclusion in the final instalment of the trilogy.
Franchise Evolution and Remake Roots
Of these the first two take direct inspiration from Jeethu Joseph’s successful Drishyam series, led by the brilliant Mohanlal.
Shifting the setting from Kerala to Goa, the movies attracted an audience in all its remade avatars for its exciting framework of alibis masterminded by an ordinary family guy whose love of movies stirs his imagination and saves his skin every single time he covers up for a crime caused in self-defence.
Sameer ‘Sam’ Deshmukh (Rishab Chadha), the casualty of this accidental crime was a rotten apple to begin with. Who knows if he had lived long enough, the system that’s going out on a limb to deliver him justice would be penalising his sexual predator behaviour?
The makers of Drishyam are not a wee bit curious. Retribution not retrospection fuels its motivations. What matters is ‘dimaag‘ and destiny never leave Vijay Salgaonkar’s (Ajay Devgn) side.
New Challenges, Climatic Twists
Fresh challenges confront him in Drishyam: The Conclusion after Crime Branch hotshot Rajveer Singh Tomar (Jaideep Ahlawat) and his peeved sidekick Gaitonde (Kamlesh Sawant providing the best laughs) snarkily vow to put ‘Goa ka sabse bada hardworking criminal’ behind bars at the behest of Sam’s parents (Tabu, Rajat Kapoor).
Vijay is nothing if not prepared.
As the rain-soaked thriller, directed by Abhishek Pathak for a script penned by him, Aamil Keeyan Khan and Parveez Shaik advances towards its big reveal — quietly dropped clues, thinly veiled threats and courtroom red herrings dole out a dual game of hide-and-seek as well as poker.
Which side will emerge victorious is a foregone conclusion.
It’s all about how the climatic twist plays out.
On that front at least, Drishyam: The Conclusion goes all guns blazing. Only the sluggish pace one has to endure to get there elicits more yawns than yays.
Performances
Akshaye Khanna’s departure (he played tough cop Tarun Ahlawat in Drishyam 2) from the project appears to weigh down the third one as it goes about overcompensating for his absence with replacement Jaideep Ahlawat’s swagger. His bristly charisma is tailor-made for Tomar’s conceit and the terror-at-tea point scene makes a wicked good example of it. But all that build up only to reduce his character to a damp squib is most disheartening.
As is watching Tabu and Rajat Kapoor’s trauma-ridden mummy-daddy on the sidelines.
Deviating significantly from Georgekutty’s coping mechanism in Drishyam 3 where he’s on the brink of becoming a lore, this one charts its own course and realises it’s time to quit while still ahead.
The twists aren’t bright but their simplistic mechanics feel truer to its ‘school dropout taking on the learned who’s who of law and order’ premise. That it confidently resolves to shed off the remake tag and, finally, uses Goa’s religio-cultural texture to its advantage is a deed well worth acknowledging if also super silly.
Critique And Conclusion
I was underwhelmed by the Malayalam version, which dumbs down the authenticity of Georgekutty’s shrewd strategies for farfetched contrivances (better suited for Bollywood’s bombastic brand) and insistence to drag it out in a fourth movie.
But I sure appreciated the grey elements colouring Mohanlal’s moral compass and contradictions.
Georgekutty monetises the guilt he is burdened by to make his movie making dreams come true. He’s a hypocrite and conformist yet accepting of his flaws and errors.
No such character evolution is to be found in Drishyam: The Conclusion.
It sidelines the emotional toll on Vijay, his wife Nandini (Shriya Saran) and daughters Anju (Ishita Dutta) and Anu (Mrunal Jadhav) for crowd-pleasing vindication.
My grievances of the series remain unchanged.
Devgn’s deadpan still borders on dull.
No matter how many plates of pav bhaji they’ve wolfed down since October 2, his onscreen family doesn’t have an iota of lived-in quality about them. For now, let’s rejoice in 11 years of chronic stress laid to rest.
Drishyam: The Conclusion Review Rediff Rating:
