Day Knight - Inspiration to new filmmakers

Director N.K.Kandi aka 'Kettavan' Nandu has come up with a heist/murder mystery/psycho-thriller with just rupees ten lakhs budget.  If not for anything else this film would surely inspire a lot of filmmakers about the possibilities of pulling off a full-length feature film at the cost that usually is incurred for a day's shooting for a medium budget movie.

The story is set in Australia and Annam (Annam) runs away on her marriage day to her lover Joseph (Aadarsh) and the two start living together promising each other that they would touch each other only after a formal wedding. Joseph accidentally meets a dying gangster and takes home a bag of cash found on him.  The don and his henchmen come hunting for Aadarsh and people start getting killed one by one and shockingly Annam too is murdered.  After a year a call comes from Annam's number and she starts speaking to him.  Is the caller Annam's ghost, what happened to the money and the gangsters and who killed Annam is what 'Day Knight' is all about.

Annam has a charming girl next door look and in the initial scenes she comes across as a loosu ponnu but as the story progresses she seems to improve in every scene and by the end, she is the most memorable character in the film.  Aadarsh tries his best to play the part of the protagonist but his amateurish acting lets him down.  The gangster played by Shajan Jojo is poorly sketched and hence makes no impact at all.  The actor who plays the dumb henchman has done a good job.  Kandi himself appears as the psycho and dominates the entire second half but he too has miles to go in the emoting department.

What works best in 'Day Knight' is the second half when a supernatural element is introduced giving the audience hope that Annam may be saved from the killer.  The reason for the psycho to hunt the girl is also convincing unlike the recent movie with that title.

The biggest letdown is the cast who cannot act to save their own lives from psychos.  Kandi has switched from one genre to another without doing justice to any of them.

Aravind Viswanathan's camera is excellent to say the least for he has captured the beauty of Australia and the indoors aesthetically and on par with the big names of the industry.  AVS Prem the editor is another backbone who has put in the trendy effects and transitions to give the movie a touch of class.  Arisen has used every background score from James Bond to Ilayaraja to Pink Panther but has put them in the appropriate places to be fair to him.  N.K. Kandi deserves credit for pulling off the film at such a low budget and though his writing has let him down his film is on par with the disastrous biggie 'Dev' or the similar non-cohesively treated 'Psycho'.

Verdict : 'Day Knight can be watched just for the technically sound making that too at ten lakhs budget.