Drishyam. Review on Drishyam

One of the big downsides to being an avid movie watcher in this age of information overload is that it's hard to go into a film knowing virtually nothing about it.

Trailers tend to give away too much. And between the innumerable promotional interviews, and all those "experts" weighing in on social media, the joy of discovery sitting there in a dark cinema hall is often lost.

Which is why I will advise you this: go in to watch Drishyam knowing as little as you can about the film. In fact, you might want to stop reading this review right about now. I will try, nevertheless, to reveal as little of the plot as I can.

As you may already know, this Ajay Devgan starrer is a remake of the 2013 Malayalam film of the same name starring Mohanlal, which was recently remade in Tamil as Papanasam starring Kamal Haasan. Nishikant Kamat, director of the terrific Marathi film Dombivli Fast and the mediocre Bollywood film Force, helms this Hindi version and seldom deviates from the original blueprint, which is a good thing for the most part.

Devgan stars as Vijay Salgaocar, a middle-class family man, living with his wife(Shriya Saran) and two young daughters in a small town in a non-touristy part of Goa. Theirs is a happy unit, even if Daddy would rather spend his time watching movies in the small office he owns than take them to the city for shopping outings.

Early on we get a sense of Vijay's ordinary life: the modest restaurant he eats at, the regular folks that are his friends, the local cable TV business he runs, a corrupt cop he often locks horns with, the practical knowledge he's acquired from his obsessive love of films, and repeated reminders that he couldn’t even clear Class Four in school.

Like in the Malayalam original, this exposition takes up a chunk of the film's first half. But to give credit where it's due, Kamat gets to the real plot comparatively sooner. An unfortunate incident pits Vijay and his family against another family…that of Meera Deshmukh(Tabu), a powerful and ruthless Inspector General of Police, and her husband(Rajat Kapoor). Both Vijay and Meera will go to great lengths for the safety and protection of their respective children, and therein arises the film’s conflict.