Same as the first two films of Sway Nirbharad vision Cosmos, the past never goes out of focus in the final installment of the Hindi-language franchise adapted from Jeethu Joseph’s superhit Malayalam original.
This constantly affects the present as the marginally educated hero, Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgan), stops at nothing to blur the truth. The idiosyncratic film buff who takes his cues from the movies he’s consumed over the years and believes that whoever controls the narrative holds all the aces.
He claims that there are two types of stories: one conceals the truth, the other becomes the truth. The story he’s telling is so important, he realizes that a bunch of people around him are scrambling for leads that could put him and his family down for good.
Riding on a tight script predicated on past mishaps and moves, Drishyam: Conclusion Puts together a story that is interesting enough not to lose too much steam as it makes its way to a flumoxing and decisive denouement. The sprawling elements on the way to the climax do their best to hold the film together.
Drishyam: Conclusion tells a story credited to director and co-screenwriter Abhishek Pathak, and not, as in the case of the first two films, to Jeetu Joseph. But the emotion that drives the hero’s actions stems from the original composition.
The interface between past and present is an ever-evolving reality that pits the wily protagonist against law enforcement and a judicial process that begins to believe that it is only one step away from getting justice for a murdered boy.
Justice is just a word; It’s the law that matters, someone says. Murder victim’s mother says I don’t want justice, I want revenge. Therefore, between the gap that opens between crime and punishment, there is a whole range of illusions.
This time the law is represented by a particularly bullying superintendent of police played deftly by Jaideep Ahlawat. The actor stole not just a scene here and a scene there, but the entire film from under Devgn’s nose.
That’s saying a lot because Devgn, on his part, makes the most of the author-backed role of a man driven by a quiet determination to do whatever it takes to keep his family out of harm’s way.
Ahlawat is probably the best thing that ever happened to anyone vision Entries, including Malayalam films, shouldered so brilliantly by the redoubtable Mohanlal.
The actor’s presence in the cast – Ahlawat steps into the boots vacated by Akshay Khanna and they fit him perfectly – elevates the sequel considerably thanks to the electrifying frisson the detective’s confrontation with Vijay creates.
This is despite the fact that what has happened, and what the audience expects from it, is heavily overshadowed by what is present and what is in the future. Drishyam: Conclusion. Something has to be done to remove the burden of hard-to-match benchmarks.
The effort takes the form of a screenplay (written by Pathak with Amil Kian Khan and Parveez Shaikh) that doesn’t take any turns in the first half. It holds less in the second but only marginally.
The first half is mainly a police procedural enlivened by Ahlawat and Kamlesh Sawant (Inspector Laxmikant Gaitonde, who reminds a colleague that top police officers may come and go but men like him are here to stay).
After the interval, the film turns into a courtroom drama led by Prakash Raj in the guise of a public prosecutor who has never lost a case in a 30-year career. But through it all, the spotlight is on the trap Vijay lays for his tormentors to cover their tracks.
Police super, Rajveer Tomar, realizes Vijay’s plans, but catching the man off guard proves to be more difficult than the lawman and his team expected.
Fabrication of alibis, concealment, manipulation and destruction of evidence and unnecessary attempts to avoid legal proceedings and prosecution.
Vijay Salgaonkar’s stock-in-trade are measures of how things were in the plotlines of previous films.
In a story that almost completely goes away Scene 3: The past is never silent (a Malayalam film released earlier this year), the hero thinks of new strategies as he moves with the same zeal as before to save his family – wife Nandini (Shriya Saran) and daughters Anju (Ishita Dutta) and Anu (Marunal Jadhav).
The law closes in on Vijay as his actions catch up to him. Ghosts from the past like grave digger Savio D’Souza and medical college security guard Raghu Nayak constantly haunt her while the skeletons in her closet (literally) come back to haunt her.
In the third and final outing of Drishyam, A man intent on protecting his family at all costs, Georgekutty departs from the course in significant ways to try to surprise his tormentors and the audience alike.
Perhaps aware that it may be past its sell-by date, the sequel attempts to gain a life of its own by crafting an independent narrative arc. Drishyam: Conclusion Not a remake in the strict sense of the word.
There are moments in the film that are intimate, apart from a lengthy matchmaking sequence involving Anju and a potential groom that is interrupted by Rajveer Tomar. The SP hollowed out the party and told Vijay that the outcome of the battle between right and wrong, truth and falsehood has already been decided.
But is it? As the conflict escalates and Vijay grows, his mind continues to wander. His actions and reactions to threats keep the viewer guessing.
To add to the challenges that Vijay must reckon with, the prosecutor, Inderjit Shetty (played with ritualistic ease by Prakash Raj), surprises the pitch for him by literally digging a grave.
And, of course, there’s former police IG Meera Deshmukh (Tabu), whose son’s death and disappearance revolve around three films, and Mahesh Deshmukh (Rajat Kapoor) a cold, calculating presence snapping at Vijay’s heels.
It all adds up rather neatly Drishyam: Conclusion A worthy parting shot. Come for Ajay Devgn, stay for Jaideep Ahlawat. The former delivers the goods. The latter adds weight, sequences that create an indelible impression.