Drishyam (2015) Review: A Film Buff Outwits the Police

Is Drishyam worth watching?

Yes. Drishyam is a smart, gripping cat-and-mouse thriller that turns an ordinary family man into a strategist, and it remains one of the most satisfying Hindi suspense films of its decade. Its pleasure lies in the plotting, which rewards close attention, and in the duel between Ajay Devgn’s quiet everyman and Tabu’s relentless police chief. The reservations are a leisurely first hour and the fact that Jeethu Joseph’s 2013 Malayalam original, which this version follows closely, did it with more texture.

What is Drishyam about?

Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn) runs a small cable TV business in a quiet corner of Goa. He had little formal schooling, but he is devoted to his wife, Nandini (Shriya Saran), their two daughters, played by Ishita Dutta and Mrunal Jadhav, and to the films he watches late into the night. When the family becomes entangled in the disappearance of a young man who happens to be the son of the state’s Inspector General of Police, Meera Deshmukh (Tabu), Vijay must use everything he has learned from the movies to protect them.

Drishyam is a Hindi-language Indian film directed by Nishikant Kamat, remade from Joseph’s Malayalam thriller of the same name. It runs 163 minutes. Rajat Kapoor plays Meera’s husband, and Kamlesh Sawant is a local policeman with a grudge against Vijay.

A thriller built on ordinary cleverness

The film’s central idea is irresistible: a man with no training in crime or law, whose only expertise comes from a lifetime of watching thrillers, takes on the full weight of the police. The pleasure is in watching him think. The script plants small details, dates and routines early, and the payoff comes from seeing how they fit together, much like the mysteries Vijay himself loves.

Kamat keeps the tension tightly wound once the investigation begins. The interrogation scenes are particularly strong, pitting the family’s rehearsed stories against increasingly aggressive questioning, and the film generates real suspense from the simple question of whether anyone will crack.

Devgn and Tabu in a battle of wills

Ajay Devgn is well cast as Vijay. His naturally reserved screen presence suits a man who shows little and thinks a great deal, and he makes Vijay’s calm feel like both strength and strain. The film rarely asks him for heroics, and it is better for it.

Tabu is the film’s standout. Meera is intelligent, determined and driven by a mother’s anguish, and Tabu makes her far more than a villain: she is formidable and frightening, yet the audience understands her. Their face-offs, polite on the surface and seething beneath, give the film its best moments. Shriya Saran and the young actors playing the daughters bring a believable warmth and fear to the family scenes.

Where the remake shows its seams

The first hour is slow. Much of it is devoted to establishing the family’s routines and to songs that add little, and viewers may grow impatient before the real story begins. Compared with the Malayalam original, this version also feels a little broader, with a more stylised villain in Sawant’s policeman and fewer of the small-town details that gave the original its texture. The film’s moral questions, about what a parent will justify to protect a child, are raised but not always explored in depth.

Who should watch Drishyam?

It is ideal for fans of clever thrillers and mysteries in which brains beat brawn, and for families with older teenagers; it is suspenseful rather than graphic. There are scenes of police brutality and themes of blackmail and crime, but little on-screen violence. Viewers who can watch with subtitles should also seek out the Malayalam original. A sequel, Drishyam 2, followed in 2022.

Two more Hindi films worth pairing with it:

• Haider, Vishal Bhardwaj’s Kashmir-set Hamlet adaptation, with Tabu in another powerful, complex role.
• Pink, a tense drama about ordinary people pitted against a system stacked against them.

The verdict

Drishyam is a clever, absorbing suspense drama that turns a family’s ordeal into a satisfying battle of wits, powered by Ajay Devgn’s restraint and Tabu’s intensity. A slow opening and the shadow of a superior original hold it back, but it remains a thoroughly entertaining thriller.

Rating: 4/5