After a rather riveting trilogy, it has been fairly well established that it is nearly impossible to outsmart the prodigious film enthusiast Vijay Salgaonkar, played by Ajay Devgn. The police have not been able to do it; neither has the legal system nor the state. Vijay emerges from each film unscathed, to the extent that it is almost heroic.

Drishyam: The Conclusion, which was released more than a decade after the first film, has lived up to the original’s glory. The plot, though loosely tied together in several places, manages to be gripping, and the characteristic plot twist at the end still feels sufficiently unpredictable. There is no doubt that this is an engaging thriller, and I am not here to question the merits of its filmmaking.

What I am significantly invested in is Vijay Salgaonkar’s ability to escape prosecution just about every time. I will not question his real motive for participating in the crime he actively committed, concealed, or enabled; perhaps it was the right thing to do. However, what is more interesting is his constant propensity to evade the law. How has he managed to do so time and again? Of course, one reason is that he thinks faster than the average person — and even a highly qualified police instructor — and seemingly sees seven years into the future, which is how he consistently and comfortably outruns the law. But this cerebral preparedness almost risks being overshadowed by something else, which happens to be an infamous trademark of our dominant political discourse. Whatever Vijay did, whether ethical or not, he managed to master a weapon more dangerous than any arms: rhetoric.

In all three films, Vijay manipulates the rhetoric to his advantage. Despite the expressionless, robotic demeanour that Ajay Devgn manages to pull off in many of his contemporary roles, Vijay Salgaonkar, as a character, has always maintained amicable relationships with everyone in his locality. Contrary to the quirky, film-loving, guy-next-door persona he portrayed in the first film, these friendships weren’t created in a vacuum. He had scrutinised every single person closely enough to trace and predict how each would react to a given situation. He had also quietly gauged how useful each of them could be to him.

The first instance of this can be seen in the first film, when his neighbours come to his rescue after he is publicly abused by the police. This crowd, of course, was deliberately mobilised by him. Even the media was called to witness this visceral display of police brutality.

He employs the same tactic in Drishyam 2, this time shaping the narrative by producing a supposedly fictional book that documents the police’s premeditated and fabricated actions against him. How could there have been such eerie similarities to an ongoing murder case? This was enough to secure Vijay’s acquittal. The book served the same purpose as mobilising his neighbours: it shaped the narrative to make people sympathise with Vijay.

However, the latest film in the franchise, Drishyam: The Conclusion, takes this to an extreme, almost becoming an allegory for the country’s current political situation, perhaps unintentionally. The film brings religion, the opiate of the masses, into the equation.

By befriending members of the church community, Vijay practically makes himself untouchable. When you are shielded by the anger of a religious group, there is little that can harm you, especially in a supremely meticulous game plan such as the one charted out by Vijay. Once you tap into the sentiments of a particularly sensitive and gullible group, as is evident given the current state of things, even the law can struggle to hold you accountable.

This further reinforces the idea that a little money and a well-crafted public persona can buy you allegiance that could prove to be your saving grace. Add faith to the mix, and you might just have the building blocks of the current ruling party.

I might be reading too much into this, but Vijay’s character has an uncanny parallel in our society: someone with a natural penchant for crafting and moulding rhetoric for personal gain. Vijay might not be the most educated person of the lot, but there is nobody, at least in his universe, more well-versed in cinema. He learns his craft from films, which is precisely why he understands the intricacies of building a narrative so well. We usually speak of ‘trial by media’ as something that declares a man guilty before a court can. But Vijay turns this on its head: here, public sympathy secures a judgement of innocence long before the legal verdict, leaving the court with little to do but play along.