Drishyam

A film set in an Indian town. Vijay Salgaonkar runs a cable television business. He was educated to the fourth grade and built his own trade. He lives with his wife and two daughters. He has one pleasure: watching films. He watches them all day in his office. His elder daughter goes to a school camp. A boy films her there in secret. Then he uses the recording to threaten her. The boy comes to their house. There is a struggle and the boy dies. The mother and daughter panic. Vijay learns everything when he comes home. From there the film is a story of covering up. He makes a plan. The plan is a chain of witnesses. The family will have been in another town on that date. Vijay actually takes them there. He buys bus tickets, stays at a hotel, goes to the cinema, eats at a restaurant. Then he goes back a day. He goes round the same places under the previous date and reminds everyone of himself. The witnesses are genuine. Nobody lies; they only confuse the date. What the narrative is interested in is not murder but construction: its idea is that the man applies what he learned from the films he watched, and that his only weapon is being able to build a story. On the other side is a police chief. Meera Deshmukh is the dead boy's mother and she runs the investigation. She is clever too. The two sides read each other step by step. The interrogation sections are the hardest part. Children are beaten and the narrative does not avoid showing it. A piece of information arrives at the end and the last part of the plan becomes clear. This is the Hindi remake of a 2013 Malayalam film, which had itself been a great success. Nishikant Kamat directed. Ajay Devgn, Tabu, Shriya Saran and Rajat Kapoor are in the cast. Who it is for: anyone who likes thrillers and crime narratives. Who it is not for: anyone expecting moral clarity; the narrative puts the viewer on the side of those covering up a death and never questions it.