The film starts with an averagely made crime scene. Your first sight on the creation might tell you that it is going to be a mediocre film, but the moment you see the title card, which has been created so ingeniously, rolling, you will get a feel - "okay! It looks like there is something in this film. Let’s see".
If you are a crime film lover, from the title card, you will be completely hooked on to the film till the near end of it. Here, the script is the main hero. Not always you expect a debutant, someone who is merely in his early 20’s, to come up with such a complicated yet thoroughly engaging story.
His narrative pattern also needs to be lauded as he induces layers of suspenseful moments, which keeps you guessing until the very end. It is for sure an impressive way of story telling. You could see that editor Sreejith Sarang and director Karthick Naren have worked on the same page.
It is not an easy deal to give a spoiler-free review for this one as it is completely knitted with twists and turns. Revealing even one scene from it could seriously affect the movie watching experience.
D-16 travels through the interpretation of actor Rahman. His last dialogue from the film happens to be, “Since I am narrating this story, I am seen as the hero of the story. Probably if it were from someone else’s angle, I would have been the villain.” The characterization of every lead is such that, they could be seen as both protagonist and antagonist. D-16 is a very matured take on life, something you don’t expect from a 22-year-old.
The audience is forced to keep guessing throughout, and when people walks out of the screen, they will debate on how things happen. The director wins that part. But one feels he must have addressed certain twists that were left abrupt, possibly assuming that those scenes look self-explanatory. A commoner does not look at a product like how its creator beholds.
Actor Rahman adds so much of value to the play, and the other cast members are just juvenile. If not for him, D-16 might have been a film with a good script spoilt by few raw gauche actors. In spite of the story being so good, the overall treatment for few section of an audience might look a little moralising.