Drishyam 2 movie review: At last a southern Indian film gets a Hindi remake that's an adaptation, not a mindless cc

Cast: Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shriya Saran, Akshaye Khanna, Ishita Dutta, Mrunal Jadhav, Rajat Kapoor, Neha Joshi, Kamlesh Sawant, Saurabh Shukla Director: Abhishek Pathak Language: Hindi When Jeethu Joseph announced a sequel to his 2013 Malayalam blockbuster Drishyam starring Mohanlal, Meena and Asha Sharath, I was skeptical. The first film had wrapped up to near perfection its saga of a seemingly perfect cover-up to an imperfect murder. Why would anyone risk messing that up? But Jeethu proved with his excellent _Drishyam 2_ _: The Resumption_ that a good writer will spot questions where none were yet asked and discern loopholes as yet unnoticed in criminal strategies that had looked flawless to a viewer at first glance. Drishyam was remade in several Indian languages, most effectively in Tamil as _Papanasam_ by the same director, with Kamal Haasan and Gautami, and by Nishikant Kamat in Hindi with the name unchanged, starring Ajay Devgn and Shriya Saran; both in the same year. So far so good, but I confess to getting skeptical once again when the release of the Hindi _Drishyam 2_ was announced. The Hindi industry a.k.a. Bollywood has largely been producing qualitatively terrible, politically non-committal and/or opportunistic cinema during the pandemic, and producers have been seeking en masse salvation in unimaginative remakes of south Indian hits. Just the past couple of months have given us Pushkar-Gayatri’s Hindi revisitation of their Tamil _Vikram Vedha_ that would have been a photocopy of the original if it weren’t for the inexplicable addition of sexist, misogynistic elements; and Mathukutty Xavier’s _Mili_ , a Hindi version of his own Malayalam _Helen_ , shaving off the sociological details that had made the Malayalam film so much more than a survival thriller. Good news. Director Abhishek Pathak’s Hindi Drishyam 2 is not a mindless cc of the Mohanlal starrer. This is an adaptation that, while faithfully reproducing Jeethu Joseph’s story, gives us a flavour of the cultural setting to which it has been transplanted from Kerala and does things with the new location that mark a refreshing change from the resurgence of prejudice and community stereotyping witnessed in Bollywood in the last decade. In Drishyam 2, seven years have passed since Vijay Salgaonkar (Ajay Devgn), his wife Nandini (Shriya Saran) and daughters (played by Ishita Dutta and Mrunal Jadhav) were subjected to custodial torture on suspicions of having killed the son of the Inspector General of Police, Meera Deshmukh (Tabu). Vijay was then a cable TV operator in small-town Goa. Now he owns a theatre and is an aspiring producer. The Salgaonkars’ increased prosperity is evident in their posher circumstances. They remain a close-knit family, happy and loving sans the saccharine nature of parivaars from the Sooraj Barjatya fold, and harbouring a difficult secret. Drishyam 2 is about the aftermath of a successful conspiracy, the toll it takes on those who are compelled to pretend their innocence, and what happens when the police continue investigating that crime long after the public and media think it has been laid to rest. We see in this case that Vijay is still apparently stoic, but Nandini and their elder daughter have been deeply affected by the psychological burden they have carried all these years. Meera’s husband (Rajat Kapoor) wants to move on, but she is too heartbroken to forget. It may appear at the start of this film that Vijay’s passion for cinema, which was at the forefront in Drishyam, has now taken a backseat, but we learn by the end that it has not. Vijay in Part 2 draws valuable life lessons from the practice of his favourite art form – with dramatic results. The Malayalam Drishyam 2 was out in 2021, and the memory of it is still fresh in my mind. So, I was pleasantly surprised to find that, despite remembering the plot, I was still drawn into this new film. One reason is that Georgekutty’s plans were so complex that the intricacies inevitably blur in the mind. Watching Vijay at work, therefore, does not feel like a  boring repetition. A revision, perhaps, if you have seen the original. And for someone who has not, this film is filled with twists that are impossible to predict. As interesting as the mystery in Drishyam 2 is the writing of the grays in Vijay and Meera. They know they are inflicting pain on each other, they understand that pain, yet they keep at it because they are both backed into corners – he by the need to safeguard his family, she by rage and her inerasable trauma. Usually, in scenes of police torture in commercial Indian cinema, the viewer is well aware that the storyteller is taking sides – either with the authorities, mostly in films about vigilante cops played by major male stars, or with their targets, usually in films about righteous, anti-establishment citizens, also played by major male stars. Drishyam 2 does not take sides. When the police, led this time by IG Tarun Ahlawat (Akshaye Khanna) along with Meera, torment the Salgaonkars, the groundwork has been laid in such a fashion that it is hard to hate Meera even while it is impossible to ignore her wrongdoings. Of course the Drishyam franchise rests on two recurring, popular tropes of mainstream Indian cinema: the patriarch as a fierce protector of his family versus the fiercely loving maa (mother) whose maternal instinct overrides all else. But neither is exaggerated to nauseating effect as they have been in Hindi cinema for decades, which is what makes the Drishyams the intelligent entertainers that they are. The Hindi Drishyam 2 fares well in a comparison with the Malayalam original and also as a standalone film, with positives and negatives in both versions. Nandini in the Hindi film is still nothing more than a scared, simpering adjunct to Vijay, whereas Rani (Meena) was given more agency and personality in Jeethu Joseph’s sequel. On the other hand, in the Malayalam Drishyam 2, there is clarity about the local community being no longer as staunchly supportive of Georgekutty and Rani as they were in Part 1, and the reason why. The Hindi Drishyam 2 edits out that important element. The latter is the one significant loss I can think of in the paring down that has been done while scripting this remake. That apart, the slimming and trimming have had a salutary effect on this new film. The use of music in the Hindi Drishyam 2 is more sparing than in the Malayalam film, which is a good thing. What gives the Hindi Drishyam 2 its own identity is the commendable, non-stereotypical portrayal of Goa, Goans and Christians here. Hindi cinema has traditionally associated Goa with only Christians, that too Christians who were caricatured relentlessly by writers up to the 1990s as alien, immoral/amoral, Westernised beings in contrast to their virtuous, traditional, virginal Hindu fellow citizens. In that sense the very fact that Hindu characters occupy the foreground of this story set in Goa makes it uncommon. Drishyam 2 also features a slew of Christian supporting characters, as would be natural in this state. When the curtain rose on a Tony Bhai and another Christian gangster in combat in the film, I wondered if we were about to be served the triteness and othering that has, disappointingly, been resumed this year by _Laal Singh Chaddha_ and _Monica, O My Darling_ . As it turns out, writers Aamil Keeyan Khan and Abhishek Pathak – who have authored the adapted screenplay – have abjured dangerous stereotypes in favour of normalisation. Like the Hindus in this film, the Christians too come in all shades of the morality spectrum, their language and clothing are not oddities and they are blended into the cultural milieu of the state. (Obviously, Goans in Goa would speak their own mother tongue in their interactions with each other, not Hindi as they solely do in Drishyam 2, but given that this film asks for a willing suspension of disbelief from the viewer on the language front, it’s a relief to see Goan Hindi not being stereotyped as it has been in past Hindi films.) On their return to playing Vijay and Meera, Ajay Devgn and Tabu continue the excellent form they brought to Drishyam. Shriya’s dialogue delivery is awkward, but the rest of the cast do a good job of their respective roles. In the case of Ajay, it must be pointed out that Sudhir Kumar Chaudhary’s camera angles play an essential part in helping him depict Vijay’s tough-as-a-rock character. The cinematography as a whole is to be noted in Drishyam 2, that rare Hindi film to go beyond the standard sights of Panaji, beaches and food shacks that Bollywood tends to explore, bringing to us instead the picturesque beauty of rural Goa. It would be nice to see Bollywood coming up with its own ideas instead of scrambling for inspiration from other parts of the country, but as remakes go, it is a joy to finally encounter a team that has favoured a thoughtful adaptation rather than a thoughtless carbon copy. As remakes go, Drishyam 2 is the best of the ones we’ve seen from Bollywood this year. Rating: 3.25 (out of 5 stars)  Drishyam 2 is in theatres.

Anna M.M. Vetticad is an award-winning journalist and author of The Adventures of an Intrepid Film Critic. She specialises in the intersection of cinema with feminist and other socio-political concerns. Twitter: @annavetticad, Instagram: @annammvetticad, Facebook: AnnaMMVetticadOfficial. Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook,  Twitter and  Instagram.