Daayra hit screens on September 18 to reviews that would make most directors happy and a box office number that won't. Trade estimates for its opening day don't even agree with each other. Filmfare put the net collection at Rs 1.15 crore. The Free Press Journal had it at Rs 1 crore flat. Either way, for a film reportedly budgeted at Rs 50-60 crore, it's a rough start.

The Meghna Gulzar-directed crime thriller cast Kareena Kapoor Khan and Prithviraj Sukumaran as DCP Ajooni Kohli and DCP Raman Kumar, two police officers who end up on opposite sides of the same case after a brutal rape-and-murder investigation curdles into a controversial encounter killing. It's their first film together, inspired by true events, and it went out across roughly 700 cinemas in both Hindi and Malayalam, with Hindi taking the bulk of the release.

The timing didn't help. Daayra opened the same Friday as Kunal Kemmu and Preity Zinta's comedy Vibe, which pulled a comparatively better Rs 1.70 crore according to FPJ. Both films were also fighting for screens against Hanuman Ansh, which continued to lead the box office through the weekend.

What's notable is that the reviews landed well above the collections. Filmfare gave Daayra 4.5 out of 5, calling it "a hard-hitting, earthy crime drama" and praising the film for refusing to hand down a tidy verdict on its central moral question. The Free Press Journal went with 3.5 stars, describing it as among Gulzar's better efforts and noting it "stays in its daayra" without tipping into melodrama. Word of mouth, per Filmfare's report, actually picked up through the evening as ticket sales trended upward through the day, which is the kind of signal trade watchers usually read as a good sign heading into the weekend.

Online, the framing has been blunter, with social chatter already tagging this as Kareena's weakest opening in years. That's a discourse point, not a confirmed record, and nobody's independently verified it against her full filmography.

FPJ's early Saturday estimates have Daayra climbing to somewhere between Rs 1.30 and 1.50 crore for day two, which would put its two-day total near Rs 2.30-2.50 crore. Vibe, by the same estimates, could hit Rs 2-2.50 crore on Saturday alone. Neither film is anywhere close to recovering its budget yet, and with overseas numbers for Daayra still not in, the real test is the weekend that's just getting underway. If the reviews are doing their job, Saturday and Sunday should tell us fairly quickly whether this one climbs or stalls out.