Daayra movie review: Encountering law…

Director Meghna GulzarActors Kareena Kapoor Khan Prithviraj SukumaranRating 3 starsFor most part of the film lead actor Kareena Kapoor Khan wears a slight smile bordering on a smirk In that sense her treatment for the role seems very different from her last coprsquos role in The Buckingham Murders 2024 that felt closer to Kate Winsletrsquos in Mare of Easttown 2021Meghna Gulzarrsquos Daayra is equally a grim suspensethriller Kareena as a seasoned cop inhabits a world that is what it is mdash India in particular as the clicheacute goes is not for beginnersHer knowall smile hence suggests the only way to navigate a labyrinthine system is not to be frustrated by it Else the system winsHer character is in fact reinvestigating a gangrape and murder case Meaning the probe was already complete The convicts nabbed They however died over what on the face of it appears to be extrajudicial killings mdash euphemistically known in desi police parlance as lsquoencounterrsquo deathsKareenarsquos role therefore is to investigate the police itself which is locally led by an IPS officer who is servicewise her peerPrithviraj Sukumaran plays the said local officer Prithviraj of course has done a few Hindi films Aiyyaa Naam Shabana Bade Miya Chote Miya Daayra does greatest service to his obviously magnetic yet minimalist screen presenceHersquos a star from Malayalam cinema that anyway does minimalism better than most of India Itrsquos just unfortunate that toptier Bollywood tends to draw Alist talents more from other southern film industries particularly Telugu where the leads are trained to deliver vapid onscreen hotair heroism aloneAs a policeman Prithvirajrsquos character seems convinced about the limitations of the law with delivering clean and swift justice Which makes him a lsquoSinghamrsquo of sortsBut is he portrayed as the conventional straightup hero as movies of a certain ilk do Well not really Hersquos not quite the convenient villain either Meghna simply provides a counterpoint to the deeply commercial role She seems to do this rather well In the same way that perhaps Meghnarsquos Raazi 2018 was a subtler riposte to what a spythriller can be even while staying within the popular mainstreamIn terms of genre Daayra is closer to Meghnarsquos Talvar 2015 mdash based on the infamous 2008 Noida doublemurder case mdash by way of putting the appointed investigators themselves on the dock and stringing the story from thereonExcept in terms of going back and forth from every angle with new evidence and twists on the same event Talvar had much stronger material to rely on play with and keep the audience sufficiently engaged every stepsecond of the wayThatrsquos not so much the case with Daayrarsquos plot per se which feels stretched as a resultAs it is a police procedural of this sort is more so the staple palette for the OTTweb series And there have been some great ones alreadyAlthough it must be added that for its sheer detailing on an existing reportfile Richie Mehtarsquos Delhi Crime 2019 remains unmatched still notwithstanding its sequels that were hardly a patch on the original It was a minutebyminute account of Delhirsquos 2012 lsquoNirbhayarsquo caseIt gets strongly referenced in Daayra which is set in 2019 The immediate parallel to draw here from the same year is the lsquoHyderabadShamshabad veterinary doctor gangrape and murderrsquo aka the lsquoDisharsquo case This picture is set in a generically fictional town named Suryapur in Teerthana for Telangana insteadHerersquos the thing though Whether or not theyrsquove read up on the said case mdash for a suspense drama the audience is adequately made aware of whatrsquos happened already As are all the characters Even while Kareenarsquos cop probes the police concernedThe loopholes of the investigation expose the callousnessrot in the system prone to dillydallying and delays Which as the film rightly points out would be way worse if you were a havenot from the boondocks hence hardly highprofile to be termed lsquoIndiarsquos DaughterrsquoItrsquos only when the picture makes its wider point that the interest piques again Which is To weigh in still on the rights and wrongs of vigilantebased poetic justice delivered by the police that holds monopoly over violence under extraordinary circumstancesAnd what are those exceptions in the first place who defines them or polices the police then Would you rather have a deeply flawed system than none at all and yet what good is a system if itrsquos loaded against the victimFrankly your sympathies on the matter could swing both ways The issue is much larger than a particular reallife event I have an answer You may have another Glad the film asks the question and leaves it at that