Drishyam: The Conclusion

Drishyam 3 walks a dangerous line. How many times can you revisit the same crime, the same family and the same cat-and-mouse game before the formula begins to show? The film doesn’t reinvent the franchise, but it does just enough to keep you invested. A new police officer, Rajveer Tomar (Jaideep Ahlawat), arrives with one mission, to do what everyone before him failed to — bring Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn) to his knees. Rajveer is convinced he has fresh evidence that can finally crack Vijay’s carefully constructed defence. His philosophy is simple: “System ka darr bana rehna chahiye.” And unlike the cops before him, he believes he has the ammunition to make Vijay pay. But Vijay has survived this game before. As he puts it, “Agar hero jail mein gaya, toh audience ko accha lagega?” It’s a line that perfectly captures the franchise’s biggest trick: making you root for a man whose actions are, at best, morally debatable.

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.

‘शब्दों में झूठ छुपने की जगह ढूंढ़ लेते हैं, लेकिन दृश्य कभी झूठ नहीं बोलते।’ लोगों की आम धारणा यही होती है कि आंखों देखा कभी झूठ नहीं होता। इसी सोच का फायदा उठाकर साल 2015 में गोवा के विजय सलगांवकर ने ‘दृश्यम’ का ऐसा खेल रचा कि सारी पुलिस और सिस्टम के सच धराशाई हो गए। दर्शक इस चौथी फेल के जबरा फैन हो गए। अब ‘दृश्यम’ के उसी चक्रव्यूह के साथ विजय आखिरी बार पर्दे पर उतरा है। इसलिए, लोगों का उत्साह चरम पर है और सच कहें तो थोड़ा गिरते-पड़ते, बाल-बाल बचते, आखिर में इस बार भी उसने बाजी मार ली है।