I watched the latest Drishyam instalment with two thoughts competing in my head. The first was admiration for a story machine that still understands the value of information: who knows what, when they know it and what they can prove. The second was irritation that Bollywood now treats this elementary craft as an exotic achievement.
The film’s commercial reception, documented through Bollywood Hungama’s industry coverage, confirms the durability of the property. Variety India’s film coverage has likewise tracked the extraordinary attention around the conclusion. I am less interested in debating each reported crore than in what the audience’s enthusiasm says. Viewers will sit through an adult, plot-driven drama when the film respects cause and effect.
That should not be a revelation. Hindi cinema once made thrillers in which ordinary spaces acquired menace and characters possessed interior lives. Today a suspiciously large number of scripts believe suspense means withholding a fact the protagonist already knows, then revealing it after an hour with three flashbacks and a percussion assault. Drishyam works because its central deception is not arbitrary. It grows from a family’s fear, a father’s practical intelligence and the limits of what institutions can establish.
Ajay Devgn’s stillness is the special effect
Vijay Salgaonkar would collapse if played as a conventional star vehicle. He needs to seem watchful rather than invincible. Ajay Devgn’s great contribution is the refusal to decorate every calculation. He lets silence do the labour. In an industry where actors often demonstrate seriousness by lowering their voice until subtitles become essential, this restraint is nearly radical.
The performance also exposes the emptiness of nepotism-era casting logic. A role does not become compelling because the actor has been pre-sold through magazine covers, gym photographs and a famous surname. It becomes compelling because behaviour, voice and physical presence align with the character’s pressures. Devgn is a star, but the film uses his accumulated authority instead of pausing to worship it.
The supporting ensemble matters for the same reason. A thriller dies when everyone except the hero behaves like an employee waiting for instructions. Investigators need intelligence, family members need conflicting impulses and minor characters need enough specificity that their choices feel dangerous. The Drishyam films have generally understood that opposition must be credible. A protagonist looks clever only when the person pursuing him is not an idiot provided by the screenplay.
I do have reservations. Franchise storytelling encourages escalation, and escalation can make a previously plausible world feel engineered. Each return risks converting Vijay from an intelligent cable operator into a clairvoyant screenwriter who has anticipated every human variable. The more elaborate the design, the more the emotional centre must remain visible. Without the family’s fear and moral corrosion, the puzzle becomes a well-polished board game.
Bollywood keeps learning the wrong lesson
The industry will probably conclude that audiences want sequels. That is the shallow lesson because it can be converted immediately into a slate announcement. The deeper lesson is that audiences want narrative contracts to be honoured. If a film plants a detail, it should matter. If a character makes a choice, it should have a cost. If the climax depends on information, the viewer should have had a fair chance to process it.
Instead, producers often buy remake rights or franchise labels without importing the discipline that made the original work. A familiar title can open a film, but it cannot maintain tension. The proliferation of cinematic universes has made this worse. A scene once needed to advance character or plot; now it can exist merely to tease a person from another film walking through a doorway.
Drishyam is itself part of a multilingual lineage, and there is no shame in adaptation when the new film understands its audience and medium. Indian cinema has always exchanged stories across languages. The shame lies in treating acquisition as creation, then sanding away local texture in pursuit of a generic national product. A thriller depends on procedure, geography and social relationships. Those details are not obstacles to universality; they are how universality becomes believable.
Bollywood should also notice the age of the protagonist. Adult audiences are not allergic to middle-aged characters with jobs, spouses and compromised moral choices. The industry’s fixation on youth frequently produces films that feel emotionally adolescent even when the cast is old enough to know better. Vijay’s appeal lies partly in competence shaped by responsibility. He does not seek self-discovery. He seeks to prevent his family from being destroyed by an act they cannot reverse.
The morality is more interesting than the trick
Some viewers treat the franchise as an instruction manual in getting away with crime. I think that misses its unease. Vijay’s actions may be understandable, but they do not restore innocence. Protection becomes control. Memory becomes rehearsal. Family intimacy is reorganised around secrecy. The law’s failure to prove something does not settle the moral question.
A stronger Hindi thriller tradition would pursue that ambiguity rather than rushing to declare its hero righteous. Commercial cinema often fears that an audience will withdraw affection if a protagonist’s choices remain morally contaminated. I suspect the opposite. Viewers recognise compromise because they live among it. They do not need a final speech certifying whom to applaud.
The police, too, should not be reduced to villains for asking the question the plot requires them to ask. Institutions can abuse power; individuals can become consumed by grief or pride. But a society cannot operate on the principle that every clever family may construct its own truth. The franchise is most alive when our sympathy for Vijay collides with our understanding that evidence and accountability matter beyond him.
This tension separates a proper thriller from a victory lap. Suspense is not simply whether the hero escapes. It is whether escape will cost something we have learned to value. The best passages in Drishyam make domestic normality feel both precious and artificial, maintained by constant vigilance.
Give writers the budget, not just the brand
If Bollywood wants more films like this, it should invest earlier in writing and development. Multiple drafts are cheaper than an unnecessary action sequence. Research into police procedure, telecommunications, geography and law is cheaper than repairing ridicule after release. Writers should be in the room before the star’s dates dictate the production calendar.
Producers must also stop assuming that publicity can manufacture narrative satisfaction. Marketing may bring the first audience, but thrillers depend on viewers recommending the experience without revealing it. That requires trust. Once an industry repeatedly tricks audiences with empty cliff-hangers or borrowed twists, every new suspense film begins in debt.
I enjoyed returning to Vijay Salgaonkar’s world, but I do not want Hindi cinema to survive on returning forever. The classics I love did not become classics by protecting intellectual property. They became classics because filmmakers understood people, pace and consequence.
Drishyam’s continuing power should embarrass the industry in a productive way. It proves that a star can underplay, adults can lead, moral ambiguity can sell and viewers can follow a carefully arranged plot. None of these are miracles. They merely look miraculous after years of films in which the loudest element was mistaken for the most important one.
