Kamat’s film works well if you haven’t seen the original. Otherwise, this remake might fall a tad short.

In the end, it all comes down to the twist ending. The story has all the trappings to keep you engaged and then the surprise climax rounds it all up nicely. But these are things not original to Drishyam’s Hindi iteration. And yet those are the strengths of this film.

‘Drishyam’ picks up momentum towards the second-half, so if you are willing to indulge the filmmaker, you wouldn’t be disappointed.

A lot is salvaged in the crackerjack reveal during the finale and it becomes easy to be swept away by the climax’s sheer populist wave. If a better, more convincing central actor had brought some authenticity to the table, Drishyam could have been a must-watch. Right now, it just gets a mild thumbs-up.

Handicapped by its stars, Kamat ends up making a decent film that doesn’t live up to its potential, lacks wow moments and seems too long at 163 minutes. And that’s a shame, because there’s a good story and an intelligent adaptation hidden out of sight in Drishyam.

The climax is just awesome and worth watching and waiting for. Performance-wise, Ajay is very good, as is Tabu. Shriya and the daughters have also acted brilliantly and do justice to their characters. The film’s direction and screenplay is very good, while the music is okay. I would say, the movie is must watch.

Drishyam is a well-made film with some exciting moments but it has appeal more for the classes. It is also too lenghty. At the box-office, it will be difficult for the film to break even despite recovery of more than 50% of the investment (Rs. 65 crore) from sale of satellite rights alone.

Drishyam is everything a Bollywood film should be – smart, hard-hitting and story-driven. It’s a must-watch, especially if you enjoy suspense films!

Drishyam is a solid remake, but a film with Tabu as in the Vijay role and Devgn as the cop would have been so much more exciting.

On paper it belongs to Ajay but on screen it is Tabu who walks away with it. And even when she is effortlessly seeking attention, the underrated Rajat Kapoor excels as the husband who retains his sanity amidst the moral chaos.

Watch it for them, watch it if you haven’t watched the original.

If the Hindi remake, also called Drishyam, proves anything, it is that Joseph’s movie, which borrows its central idea from the Japanese thriller The Devotion of Suspect X, is a hard act to follow. The Hindi Drishyam, directed by Nishikant Kamat, works just fine so long as it reproduces its original twisty quality, but it nevertheless suffers from miscasting and unnecessary scripting tweaks.