Khufiya (2023) – Slow, refreshing and engaging

Music and Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

Screenplay – Vishal Bhardwaj,  Rohan Narula – based on Amar Bhushan’s story

Cast: Tabu, Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi, Azmeri Haque Badhon, Navnindra Behl, Ashish Vidyarthi

(All links are in Blue)

Using a mole, Heena Rehman, code-named Octopus (Azmeri Haque Badhon), an Indian operation to “neutralise” the Bangladeshi “Jihadi” defence Minister Mirza (Shataf Figar), goes hopelessly wrong. Mirza gets a last-minute telephonic call, and in full public view, he kills Heena. Indian agency operative Krishna Mehra (Tabu) is furious. Her superior, Jeev (Ashish Vidyarthi), gives her the bad news – a mole inside R&AW blew the operation.

Suspect Ravi Mohan (Ali Fazal) is “living beyond his means”. Ravi is under surveillance as he ticks all the points: unexplained income, access and membership in a club where Ravi’s wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi) is friendly with the Pakistani High Commissioner’s wife. They install hidden cameras and monitor their life. When no one is home, Charu lets her “inner self go” as she smokes pot and dances in abandon to old Hindi film songs. Ravi’s mother, Lalita (Navnindra Behl), is a disciple of a “yogi” who has miraculously cured her ailments. Ravi gets expensive necklaces for Charu, which he jokingly explains as “from spying”.  KM and the team, watch mother and son rejoice in the waterfall of cash as she is also in on it.

Ravi spots the surveillance team and kills one team. In the ensuing panic, he calls his AMERICAN handlers (and not Pakistanis as feared). Ravi, his mother and son flee, as Charu has been accidentally shot in the melee. Charu decides to go to America and seek Ravi. All these and more are watched by KM, battling her demons of separation from her son and husband. After six months of roaming in America, Charu finds her family, who do not know she works for Krishna.

The worst thing that the Bond wagon and its imitators have done is brainwash the audience into a highly exaggerated view of spying. If Bond and his various foreign imitators finally killed the villains using a combination of guns, girls and gadgets in exotic locations, their Indian equivalents did the same with a difference – they also sang songs! If the success of the latest “YRF SPY Universe” offering “Pathan” is anything to go by, this “template” has been so successful that the audience shoos away anything beyond it, as it lacks explosions, songs and car chases! Even if they are well made, “realistic” Indian spy films – generally – are box office disasters

From that perspective, Khufiya is a breath of fresh air as it adheres more to the realistic spy thriller Universe as explained in the books of John le Carre, Len Deighton and many other superb writers. In this world, information is obtained, sifted and then decisions taken. In that aspect, the film’s pacing is perfect – though some scenes could have been edited away to give it a much tighter feel. That said, the story unfolds in front of us serially and not as a series of “in-your-face” explosions.

Attention to detail is excellent. Since the story is set in the early 2000s, there are no smartphones (nice to see the old-fashioned green screen Nokias). So, Ravi photocopies the files that pass his desk. Since Ravi is picking up so much information by photocopying, they are delivered in a gym bag to a remote location from where it is collected by another person. The two ends do not meet the middle man, and confirmation of delivery and receipt is confirmed by old fashioned “Moscow Rules” style ‘chalk marks’. Another aspect is following the suspect. First, it is with a single vehicle, but later it is with multiple vehicles. Naturally, Indian R&AW agents also wear smart suits to the office. In the field, they use shades and drive SUVs like their cinematic CIA counterparts.

KM is a driven character who has focused so much on her career that she is separated from her husband Shashank (the excellent Atul Kulkarni thoroughly wasted here) and teenaged son Vikram (Meet Vora), who resents her absence.

It’s Charu’s transformation that is a real boost to the plot. From loving housewife to victim to a cold Mole for the Indian R&AW against Ravi (and the CIA). Wamiqa Gabbi is excellent as the somewhat driven woman who is counter to the equally driven Krishna. This section is the one that also drags and could have been tighter.

A surprise is Navnindra Behl as the mother. Greedy. Whining. Selfish. Her line, “America is not that great. We have come to a land of strangers. My hands are raw due to cleaning, cooking, and all the household chores. (I was smiling at this scene as I was reminded of a person I know complaining along similar lines a few years ago that “in this country labour is expensive and I have to do all household chores). Till he gets “cleared” by the CIA, Ravi has to manage with odd jobs (again personal observations of fresh immigrants waiting at tables and doing odd jobs.

Lest anyone thinks this is an unbelievable story, there have been at least three defections of R&AW officers to the West who helped them to resettle with a new identity there. So, from that perspective alone, this is an excellent film that does decent justice to a genre usually hijacked by big-budget Bond and Bourne clones. The obvious inspiration is the defection of Ravindra Singh to America. His CIA masters supposedly dumped him and he was supposed to have died in an accident.

The script is  female-centric, so the female characters get more than their fair share of screen time. In keeping with her driven character, Tabu underplays Krishna. That Krishna is leading a semi-bachelor life is shown in one shot where she prepares a 2-minute noodle – the sustenance of many an Indian bachelor. Krishna also smokes, uses the F word (in keeping with modern sensibilities), and is ruthless at her job but hopelessly vulnerable around her teenage son. Wamiqa is also excellent as Charu, whose world collapses around her, and she sets herself on the path of recovery. So is Badhon as Heena, aka Octopus. Except for Ravi, most male characters look and sound like walk-on parts. The music by Vishal Bhardwaj is an interruption. Still, it is also the device that ultimately helps Charu to find her family.

With some deft editing, the total timing could have been reduced to 2 hours from its current 2 hours 30 minutes. However, being an entry in the realistic “unBonded” universe, the film stands up on its own merits.

It is a slow and engaging watch.

The film was released on October 5 on Netflix.

Script – 3 out of 5

Story – 4 out of 5

Direction – 4 out of 5

Photography – 4 out of 5

Total – 3.8 out of 5