Vishal Bhardwaj's Khufiya walks away quickly. A botched murder in Dhaka is blamed on a mole in Delhi's research and analysis wing. Ravi (Ali Fazal) has been hiding classified documents from his paymasters. His boss Jeev (Ashish Vidyarthi) tasks Krishna (Tabu) with exposing the traitor.
Binoculars, hidden cameras and recording equipment begin to work. The contours of Ravi's domestic life come to light. His wife Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi) is suspected of helping him. His mother (Navnindra Behl) follows a singing god (Raghu Ram). There is a personal dimension to Krishna's involvement: the spy has her own hidden side that few know about, including her husband (Atul Kulkarni).
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Writers: Vishal Bhardwaj, Amar Bhushan, Rohan Narula
Stars: Tabu, Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi
Despite having revealed a lot from the beginning, the 157-minute Khufiya still has great ambitions. Bhardwaj wants to offer a character study along with a horror thriller. However, despite its solid craftsmanship, meaty individual scenes, and some brilliant performances, the film turns a long-distance race into a slog.
Khufiya is available on Netflix. The Hindi film is loosely based on Amar Bhushan's 2019 novel Escape to Nowhere. The script, by Bhardwaj and Rohan Narula, follows the "adapt or die" rule that applies equally to survival literary and film versions.
If you get too close to the source, you could lose the element of surprise. If you zoom out too far, viewers may wonder what attracted you to the book in the first place. Khufiya attempts to solve the puzzle by reversing the gender of a couple of characters (the book's main problem solver is a man), as well as inventing new players and story arcs.
Despite its turgid prose, Escape to Nowhere is a strong candidate for adaptation in its own right. Bhushan, former head of RAW's Counter-Intelligence Unit, based his novel on a real operation against Rabinder Singh, who was spying for the United States. Despite RAW's efforts – and due to diplomatic demands, according to Bhushan – Singh successfully defected to the United States in 2004.
The book is packed with details about surveillance, interdepartmental rivalry and high-level interference that nullifies the work of honest officials on the ground. Although Bhushan probably didn't intend to do it, Escape to Nowhere paints a sorry picture of RAW as a bumbling organization, too late to plug leaks and unable to get the job done.
Eager to distance themselves from the source material, Bhardwaj and his co-writer take Khufiya somewhere between conventional spy thriller and psychological drama. If Bhardwaj has cited The Lives of Others as a source, Khufiya has the vibe of John Le Carré's melancholic novels, about the inner lives of hard-drinking, fatalistic British spies.
Khufiya is set in 2004. India and Pakistan are watching a crucial election in Bangladesh. Negotiations for the nuclear deal between India and the United States are underway. Flashbacks reveal Krishna's source of information about Bangladeshi Brigadier Mirza (Shataf Figar): the feisty Heena (Azmeri Haque Badhon).
Present day in Delhi, Ravi's apartment yields startling images. Charu's cameras reveal the porous line between surveillance and voyeurism. Wamiqa Gabbi has better scenes in Khufiya than the one where Charu's free-spirited nature is exploited for a spicy moment.
This scene is set to a Jawaani Deewani song. Bhardwaj's own original score is used as fragments of a narrative that has too much ground to cover and not enough time to dwell on the melodies or their lyrics.
If moles have souls, why can't plots have holes? The center section wobbles under the weight of the excessive layout. RAW hunters often hide in plain sight, sometimes following tracks just a few meters away. Having flirted with shining a torch on the moral darkness involved in espionage, Khufiya settles for a routine thriller with an unconvincing outcome.
The compelling female characters easily outshine the men. (As Ravi, Ali Fazal always seems uncomfortable, and not just because of the script's requirements.)
Heena, memorably played by Rehana Maryam Noor actor Azmeri Haque Badhon, is on screen long enough to leave a lasting impression. Wamiqa Gabbi provides domestic oomph as well as a valuable counterbalance to the film's best invention.
Tabu wonderfully plays a professional who distrusts training, gets upset when she is asked to do so, and pursues her desires in the shadows. Tabu is equally a match for Krishna's toughness, who appears when Ravi's escapade threatens to spiral out of control.
Watch Khufiya 2023 Movie Trailer
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