Daayra trailer puts Kareena Kapoor and Prithviraj on opposite sides of an encounter

The trailer for Daayra went out on 31 August. Meghna Gulzar's film opens in cinemas on 18 September. Kareena Kapoor Khan plays DCP Ajooni Kohli. Prithviraj Sukumaran plays DCP Raman Kumar. They share a screen for the first time. They do not share a method.

The 2-minute-19-second cut starts with the abduction, rape and murder of a young girl. Public anger follows. Raman takes the suspects to a remote spot and kills them. Ajooni arrives as an internal investigator with a brief to look at his record of encounter killings. The turn in the trailer is specific. One of the dead is 16.

What Gulzar is making

Gulzar has been here before. Talvar treated a real murder file as a problem of procedure and storytelling. Daayra is being sold as a film about the line between legal process and extra-judicial force. The title means circle, or boundary. The trailer treats that boundary as the thing the two officers cannot agree on.

At the launch in Mumbai she described Ajooni as "a cop who wears lipstick." Kapoor said motherhood had made her a better actor. Those are launch-day lines. The useful line is the juvenile victim. Indian cinema has filmed encounter cops for decades. Fewer films have made the age of one of the dead the hinge of the plot.

The cast around them includes Jitendra Joshi, Kshitee Jog, Sandeep Kulkarni and Trupti Khamkar. Vineet Jain is among the producers. Junglee Pictures made the film. Pen Marudhar is distributing it. Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal and Karan Johar posted reactions after the trailer dropped. That is the marketing layer. It does not change the premise.

Why the date matters

18 September is a busy release weekend if the film holds that date. The trailer is doing the work a first look should do. It names the crime, names the two officers, and names the fact that one of the men Raman killed was a child in the eyes of the law. Viewers who have followed encounter cases in Uttar Pradesh, Mumbai or Telangana will recognise the argument. Viewers who have not will still see two uniforms that do not fit the same idea of justice.

Gulzar's record says she will not resolve that argument with a speech. The trailer already refuses to treat Raman as a simple villain or Ajooni as a simple hero. The film will be judged on whether the 16-year-old stays at the centre once the songs and the city lights arrive. That is the test she set for herself by putting the age on the screen in the first two minutes.