On demand: "Drishyam 2"

The Drishyam series represents one of the Indian cinema's most organic successes over the past decade or so, although it is, all told, a rather complicated success to have to try and explain. The films, for one, are self-reflexive puzzle boxes: tricksy, rug-pulling thrillers centred on a lowly cable-TV repairman who uses his knowledge of procedural dramas to get his family - and himself - out of legal tight spots. And every industry has had its own iteration of the series, with local stars cast as the over-protective paterfamilias: mighty Mohanlal in the Malayalam originals, written and directed by Jeethu Joseph; cuddly Kamal Haasan in the Tamil remake Papanasam, again overseen by Joseph; and - in the most-viewed Hindi variant - sleepy-eyed Ajay Devgn, lending the same protagonist a noticeably harder edge. (There was even a Chinese remake, Sheep Without a Shepherd, which played here in late 2019.) The Hindi variant's progress has proven more tangled than its own plotting: the director of 2015's Drishyam, Nishikant Kamat, died from Covid complications in August 2020, delaying production on 2022's Drishyam 2, which eventually went ahead with Abhishek Pathak at the helm. Since we last met him, Devgn's Vijay Salgaonkar has expanded his portfolio to include a multiplex cinema of the kind Drishyam 2 would have been showing in; his reintroduction scene positions him as an affectless Max Cady, guzzling popcorn in the dark and getting ideas from the films he sees. He has a fair bit on his plate as it is: the ongoing perpetuation of the cover-up from film one; ambitious moves into film production and book publishing, which have entailed his draining the marital joint account; a daughter whose trauma is so internalised she's started succumbing to near-fatal panic attacks; an abusive neighbour threatening to blow the whistle on him; and not one but two uniformed pursuers on his tail, the mournful Tabu having now been joined by chess master Akshaye Khanna. Vijay Salgaonkar spent much of the first movie digging; that hole gets only deeper here.

It is, then, one of those sequels that spends three-quarters of its running time piling it on: more characters, more stress, even heavier weather. You can instantly see why this material has compelled battle-hardened producers so - somewhere in here is another of the recent cinema's parables of crisis management, not to mention some self-justification for any creatives taking extreme measures to get a project across the line - but it rapidly approaches a point where we might wonder whether this franchise is ever going to be enjoyable again. The approach would be fine if the underlying plot mechanics held up: the hope is everything has been set in place so this altogether knotty business can be untied with an impressive final flourish. (And maybe a ta-dah!: at their best, these films operate in much the same territory as a magic trick.) Through its middle stretch, however, Drishyam 2's mechanics feel a bit clunky: certain revelations depend on a) someone being awoken at 4.30am by a wife having an asthma attack, b) an unrelated character happening to be in the exact right place at the exact right time, and c) Vijay having an all-seeing CCTV system installed. Sure, all these things could happen in reality, but the writing feels sloppier than it has been elsewhere in this series; you sense Pathak, too, is having to drag himself out of holes. 

Thankfully, the actors steady it. The no-nonsense Khanna, whose stillness and precision of word and gesture really are virtues in this context, suggests what might have happened had the antagonist in Terminator 2 been played by Robert Duvall rather than Robert Patrick; the hairline, for one, is a definite match. (After a forceful reintroduction, Tabu is all but stood down this time: you begin to wonder if she had other commitments.) And while this isn't, on the surface, Devgn's most interesting performance - the extra chicanery means there's little time for him to suggest a personality beyond "man trying to maintain the status quo" - he does seem to have arrived at a very different read on this character: his is the only Drishyam hero you don't want to see get away scot-free. Yes, Vijay's clearly been left tired and snippy by events, but he's also a dick to his wife and a father whose absence is explained - but not, really, excused - by a final wrap-up. (Where Mohanlal and Haasan's performances sat on the fringes of Liam Neeson dadsploitation, Devgn looks to have taken his cues from Dexter and maybe even The Cable Guy, reframing the character as a latent sociopath rather than some charming Everyman.) Two films into this series, and I still can't be certain whether this is decisive creative heresy - a consciously unflattering portrait of Indian husbandry - or just a slightly off lead performance, but it sure injects a note or two of ambiguity into a sequel that otherwise proceeds by the book.

Drishyam 2 is now streaming via Prime Video; a third film, Drishyam: The Conclusion, is now showing in cinemas nationwide.