Khufiya Review: Wamiqa Gabbi Steals The Show In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Spy Thriller That Feels Like Two Different Films
Khufiya is kaafi deceptive.
In Vishal Bhardwaj’s Khufiya, an espionage thriller starring Tabu, Ali Fazal, and Wamiqa Gabbi, the personal blends with the political. And yet, somewhere in the middle, it feels like you’re watching a different film, still strongly invested. The sense of disjointedness lingers, making the film constantly touch its potential but never quite peak through it. Khufiya is written by Bharadwaj and Rohan Narula. It is based on Amar Bhushan’s novel Escape To Nowhere. It also stars Ashish Vidyarthi, Atul Kulkarni, Navnindra Behl, and Azmeri Haque Badhon.
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Khufiya is the story of an entanglement amongst three countries—India, Bangladesh, and the United States—and their secret services, each with their own agenda. Khufiya is also the story of three people who find the secrets of their personal lives entangled with those of these nations.
Tabu is Krishna Mehra or KM, a critical RAW operative who seeks to avenge the death of an asset from her spy network. For her, the loss feels personal for several reasons, one of them being that for KM, her work is her life. She’s divorced, but her ex-husband is still her friend and perhaps the only one who understands her. And she is a mother to a teenage boy who understands his mother’s erratic life and broken promises, but now demands the truth or nothing.
Ravi Mohan is suspected of being a mole passing on state secrets to enemies, one that led to KM’s operation failing. The trailer shows us already that he thinks of himself as a patriot who is working for the eventual good of his country, dismissed by seniors who just don’t understand his grand plan. He is a family man too, with a mother, a wife, and a son, whom he loves.
Charu is Ravi’s wife, a homemaker, the ideal wife, mother, and daughter-in-law. But in the empty, lazy hours of the afternoon, she reveals her secrets… She performs to old Bollywood songs, rolls a joint, and sings ghazals.
Having recently watched the Indian adaptation of The Night Manager, John le Carré’s espionage novel that plonks a civilian with an army background into the world of spies and state secrets, the association was almost naturally made. There’s a certain sensuousness to the gaze in the first half, almost as if we, the audience, are spying on the lives of these people.
Bhardwaj creates a setting that lets his poetic style in subtext speak more than direct dialogues do, apt for a film that wants you to carefully observe, make deductions, and see through the deception. The focus is rarely on the procedural. It is these characters and their motivations and actions that reel you in. It’s not the cold-hearted or calculated decisions made by the characters that change the game, but when they let their most human, most vulnerable emotions fuel their choices. The music is hauntingly good with the lyrics by Gulzar, Sant Kabir, and Sant Rahim adding depth to the story.
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But Khufiya has its own deception going on that you don’t realise until the middle of the film. The first half will have you believe that we’re here for the story of KM and Ravi Mohan, the hunter and the hunted. Yet the second half pivots to being all about Charu, the bait. The gaze suddenly turns cold. The characters are stripped of all their secrets, and suddenly, it feels like you’re watching two different films. I was invested in both. Wamiqa Gabbi as Charu is captivating from start to finish, and easily the best thing about Khufiya. But I was equally invested in Tabu’s KM in the first half, and the eventual sidelining of her character left me feeling unsatisfied. Ali Fazal, too, meets the same fate.
Khufiya then feels less of an espionage thriller and more like a story convincing you that women could be excellent spies because they’re naturally inclined to deception. The parts they must keep playing all their lives, never being their true selves, except occasionally before other women. They could even be strangers but the shared struggle of being a woman is sometimes the only thing that can break down those defences. This story is about mothers, perhaps the biggest secret keepers of them all, keeping secrets for their sons and from them as well. And hey, that could be a great story to tell too.
But even there, there’s something holding it back. The two strong female arcs get only a tiny intersection, a phone call where Charu breaches KM’s defences for a moment, which could’ve convinced you this is the story it wanted to tell all along. But the moment never comes. Khufiya never threatens to be great, despite its potential. You’re never really sure which story it wanted to tell.
Also Read: What To Watch This Week of October 1 To 8: Thank You For Coming, Khufiya, Loki S2, And More!
Verdict
Khufiya is never not good. It’s actually like two good films rolled into one but kept from the kind of greatness we expect from Vishal Bhardwaj films. Its two halves don’t come together as well as we’d like them to. The film’s album deserves a place on your playlist; I’ve been humming ‘Na Hosh Chale’ (composed and sung by Vishal Bhardwaj) and ‘Mat Aana’ (Rekha Bhardwaj). Khufiya is still worth a watch on this weekend.
Khufiya is currently streaming on Netflix.
