Daayra Review: Meghna Gulzar's 2026 Crime Drama

Raman (Prithviraj Sukumaran) has built a career on shortcuts. Staged encounters, custodial violence, loose paperwork - his record is shady enough that half the force knows it and the other half looks away. Then Ajooni Kohli (Kareena Kapoor Khan) arrives, and she isn't interested in looking away. A DCP with her own reasons for distrusting men who treat the law as a personal weapon, she begins challenging Raman at every turn: on procedure, on evidence, on the bodies he's left behind. What starts as professional friction curdles into something more dangerous, pulling in Inspector Karad (Jitendra Joshi), Commissioner Prakash Anand (Biswapati Sarkar), and the quietly watchful Parvati (Kshitee Jog). As the pressure mounts, Raman's methods begin to expose not just him but the system that trained him.

The film's title translates roughly to "circle" - as in a cycle, a trap, or a wheel that keeps turning. That metaphor does a lot of heavy lifting here, because Daayra is less a whodunit than a study of how institutions reproduce the same violence generation after generation. Gulzar and her writers don't hand the audience a villain; they hand it a man who genuinely believes he's on the right side, which is far more unsettling.

Prithviraj Sukumaran is superb as Raman, playing him not as a snarling brute but as someone exhausted by his own compromises. There's a scene - no spoilers - where he defends an action he clearly knows is indefensible, and the way Prithviraj lets the lie sit in his mouth before swallowing it is worth the ticket price alone. Opposite him, Kareena Kapoor Khan gives Ajooni a coiled stillness. She isn't a crusader; she's a strategist. The screenplay wisely refuses to make her a saint, and Kareena finds the jagged edges in her righteousness.

The supporting cast fills out the world with real texture. Jitendra Joshi's Karad is the kind of loyal subordinate who's been around too long to be shocked by anything, and Kshitee Jog's Parvati carries the film's emotional weight in a handful of scenes. Biswapati Sarkar, better known for comedy, is a nicely unexpected choice as the Commissioner, though the role itself is underwritten. Sandesh Kulkarni, Pragati Mishra, and Brij Bhushan Shukla round out the ensemble capably.

Where Daayra falters is in its midsection. The procedural beats between the two DCPs start to repeat themselves: confrontation, investigation, reversal, confrontation. At 141 minutes, you feel the padding, and a subplot involving a past case that should land harder instead drifts. The film also builds toward a confrontation that it resolves with more ambiguity than the narrative earns - an ending that feels less like deliberate open-endedness and more like a refusal to commit.

Technically, it's polished in the way Bollywood crime dramas now routinely are: moody lighting, a restrained score that knows when to shut up, and a camera that prefers faces to spectacle. But the writing occasionally mistakes solemnity for depth; not every silence is profound, and not every monologue about justice needs to be delivered at half-volume.

Still, this is a film with something on its mind, and in a season dominated by franchise spectacle, that counts for a lot. It's not Gulzar's best work - it's overlong and at times too pleased with its own ambiguity - but it's an intelligent, adult drama anchored by two actors at the top of their game. The TMDb rating of 0/10 reflects nothing but an absence of community votes this early in the release window; audiences will settle that number soon enough.

Pros

• Career-best work from Prithviraj Sukumaran, who resists every easy villain trope
• Kareena Kapoor Khan brings steel and vulnerability to a role that could have been one-dimensional
• Sharply observed supporting turns from Jitendra Joshi and Kshitee Jog
• A screenplay that treats institutional corruption as a system, not a personality flaw
• Confident, unfussy direction that trusts its actors

Cons

• 141 minutes is too long; the middle third repeats its own arguments
• The ambiguous ending feels less earned than evasive
• Biswapati Sarkar's Commissioner deserves more screen time and depth
• Some dialogue mistakes solemnity for profundity
• A promising past-case subplot never fully connects to the main narrative

Daayra is the kind of film Hindi cinema should be making more of: a two-star vehicle that actually challenges its stars rather than flattering them. It's flawed - overlong, occasionally self-serious, and reluctant to land its final punch - but it's also gripping, intelligent, and anchored by two performances worth the price of admission. If you've grown tired of cops who are either saints or monsters, this one offers something rarer: people, caught in a circle they helped build. Worth your time, even if it doesn't quite close the loop.