Indian spy thrillers are usually laughable attempts at spy craft. On both ends of the scale. Neither do we make dark, sombre, slower-paced masterpieces like The Osterman Weekend, nor do we indulge in stylized, slick, faux-realistic brilliance like the James Bond or Jason Bourne movies. Sure, we don’t lack the technical aspect of filmmaking anymore. But we just manage to make a mess of it all in the end. The plots usually end up with loopholes the size of the Sea of Tranquility, we are compelled to add songs to make the movies more massy, and then we try and aim to slingshot through every trope there possibly can be in the spy thriller genre to give the audiences the impression of seeing a gritty spy classic.

Usually.

Not this time though.

Vishal Bhardwaj makes his way back to the longer format after a long, long hiatus - almost too long - and we can safely say that it was well worth the wait.

Adapted from Amar Bhushan’s espionage novel, Escape to Nowhere, Khufiya is set in the shadowy world of intelligence in the aftermath of the Kargil War of 1999. The upcoming elections in Bangladesh are of vital interest to both India and Pakistan and the presence of a bigger power lurking in the deep recesses of international espionage that takes the entire subcontinent by storm.

The made-for-Netflix movie doesn’t miss a skip in landing right into the middle of the action in Dhaka, at the birthday celebrations of Bangladeshi defense minister, Mirza (Shataf Figar). The arrival of the operative femme fatale, Octopus (Azmeri Haque Badhon) and the subsequent fallout from what happens thereafter form the immediate basis of the scintillating spy thriller.

The incident in Dhaka makes R&AW aware of a mole in their midst, someone who was selling out their plans and secrets to an enemy state. Ravi Mohan (Ali Fazal), a R&AW employee, is identified as the mole, which leads Krishna Mehra (Tabu) to lead a team and bug his home and office.

The story starts to whiz by from that point onwards, with there hardly being any other major subplot to keep us from the blistering thriller that ensues. The work carried out by KM and her team is very much on point and realistically set - a welcome relief from the usual over-the-top Q-like gadgets that usually feature in such movies. There’s no exploding pen, no knife in the boot, nothing that could cheapen the impact of such arduous hard work that intelligence operatives carry out on a daily basis. Instead, Bhardwaj focuses on the story and allows the superbly defined characters to force the story forward and propel it toward its natural conclusion.

Nothing happens just by chance. Events unfold as they should because they were thought out and planned out immaculately by all sides in their dance of death. There is no awkward flip-flop, no shabby mishandling that alters the course of events. Things happen as they should.

The first half is an absolute masterpiece in storytelling. Your attention just does not sway, like KM and Ravi Mohan, you too are a willing pawn in this narrative, your task being to silently watch what happens on screen.

But once the stage shifts around the concluding half of the movie, the speed of the narrative does start to sag ever so gently. I am not saying this to diss the second half, but I have to admit honestly that it surely wasn’t as good as the first. A few very minute loopholes start to appear - like how Charu (Wamiqa Gabbi) finds KM in the first place in the restaurant - and then we move into the tired old concept of an agency building assets to help them meet their objectives. While this is in no way an unbelievable, fantastic concept since building and deploying civilian assets is all part of the spy playbook - but with it comes the usual weight of civilian doubt, guilt, and interior motives - everything that slowly starts taking the focus off the main storyline and slowing down the superiorly paced narrative from the first part.

But right towards the end, the story finds its way back again and we are treated to some absolutely specimen quality thriller work that absolutely warms the cockles of your heart. Vishal Bhardwaj is not a man to be taken lightly, his work belongs to the superior quality of finesse that is so often lacking with the usual fare we are treated to regularly. Khufiya is no different in that regard.

The movie does totally belong to the director, there is no argument here. But it also belongs to the actors - all of them, be it Tabu as the laser-focused, emotionally involved team leader out to seek justice and revenge; Ali Fazal who truly believes that deep down he’s not a traitor but a super patriot who’s line of thinking is way far ahead of his country’s, even as his lifestyle and his life choices belie that idea; Wamiqa Gabbi, who’s uninhibited performance as a woman out of place and out of time is one of the bedrocks that this movie rests on; and a spate of other character actors who are all worth their weight in gold and do justice to all the screen time they are provided in this epic thriller.

Vishal Bhardwaj links three women into this masterful tale of lies and deceit, working with his OG muse and his new muse who is no doubt her successor, and together, all of them provide us with a fresh look at amazing work that will no doubt follow in their footsteps. This doesn’t just bode well for Khufiya, it bodes well for the entirety of Bollywood - since the benchmark has now been set.

Khufiya was amazing. It doesn’t deserve to be watched, it just has to be watched.

There’s no two ways about it.