Khufiya: Movie all about revenge driven agent

Adapted from former Research and Analysis Wing officer Amar Bhushan’s spy novel Escape to Nowhere (you might want to pick up the book after the film), Khufiya is a slow burn thriller.

Hyderabad: Anyone who has been a witness to Vishal Bhardwaj’s previous works, whether it be Maqbool, Omkara, Haider and others, will know adapting books into cinematic marvels is the man’s forte.

His latest offering, Khufiya, is a good introduction to the world of spy and espionage for those who aren’t fans of the genre. Unlike the masala tigers and pathaans, he strips down the world of intelligence to what it really is —scouring through tons of information and surveillance footage in the hope of finding that one pointy needle.

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Adapted from former Research and Analysis Wing officer Amar Bhushan’s spy novel Escape to Nowhere (you might want to pick up the book after the film), Khufiya is a slow burn thriller.

Tabu perhaps gives one of her career best performances as an intelligence agent Krishna Mehra aka KM caught between following her heart’s desires and familial duties. The first scene of the film is almost a painting as Tabu recalls things about her dead lover in poetry-like monologue. The broody cinematography that have come to be Vishal’s signature envelops the film throughout.

We also get a glimpse of KM’s hot temper simmering under the surface threatening to break through when she pounds the face of a colleague to a bloody pulp when her spy/lover is killed. Her job is to bring the mole who leaked the information that got her lover killed in Bangladesh to book and keep international relations between three nations from going haywire. The mole is revealed early on. Indian secret service operative Ali Fazal’s Ravi is suspected of leaking information to forces unknown. What trips up the higher authorities is his lifestyle which doesn’t match his income and his propensity to carry sensitive documents home.

Vishal’s meticulous attention to detail means audiences get to see how difficult a job it is to bug and surveil someone’s house and how tediously intelligence is gathered, there is no glamour here, it’s stripped bare. There are moments of tension when whilst KM and her team are placing hidden cameras around Ravi’s house his wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi) returns home keeping one on tenterhooks about whether they will be caught. Wamiqa Gabbi who appears to have become Bhardwaj’s muse is uninhibited as the housewife dancing with gay abandon and who later becomes a pivotal player in the film. She matches Tabu’s performance frame per frame and is un underrated performer. Ali Fazal’s performance as an easily manipulated Ravi is pretty monotone and doesn’t display a range of emotions as expected of his character. With spy thrillers, music that elevates the thrill element is paramount, but in some sequences, it’s sounds odd. Two sub-plots about a lesbian relationship and Yogi baba could have been left at the chopping table which added to the length of the movie. If you have patience, stick till the end, but it’s a looooooong movie.

Movie: Khufiya

Streaming on: Netflix

Director: Vishal Bhardwaj

Cast: Tabu, Wamiqa Gabbi, Ali Fazal, and Ashish Vidyarthi