Bhardwaj & Son’s ‘Khufiya’ & ‘Kuttey’ (2023)

Directed by: Vishal Bhardwaj [1], Aasmaan Bhardwaj [2] || Produced by: Vishal Bhardwaj, Rekha Bhardwaj [1, 2], Ankur Garg, Luv Ranjan [2] 

Screenplay by: Rohan Narula [1], Vishal Bhardwaj [1, 2], Aasmaan Bhardwaj [2] || Starring: Tabassum Hashmi [1, 2], Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi, Azmeri Haque Badhon [1], Arjun Kapoor, Naseeruddin Shah, Radhika Madan, Konkona Sen Sharma, Kumud Mishra [2]

Music by: Vishal Bhardwaj || Cinematography: Farhad Ahmed Dehlvi || Edited by: A. Sreekar Prasad || Country: India || Language: Hindi

Running Time: 157 minutes [1], 108 minutes [2] || 1 = Khufiya, 2 = Kuttey

One of my early favorite Hindi movies beyond the new millennium era works of Sanjay Bhansali (e.g. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam [1999], Devdas [2002]) was Haider (2014), written, directed, and produced by Vishal Bhardwaj. The film was the third installment in the prolific, decorated Hindi filmmaker’s unofficial trilogy of William Shakespeare adaptations (Haider = Hamlet [1601]) that includes 2006’s Omkara (a reimagining of Othello [1603]) and Maqbool (Macbeth [1606]) in 2005. From the movie’s depiction of realistic, grungy on-screen violence to its restrained, relatable characterizations to its surprisingly mature political commentary, Haider celebrated the cultural heritage of its Kashmiri setting without censoring its complicated historical backdrop, all within the effective, honed melodrama of a Shakespearean theatrical format.

Wamiqa Gabbi (right), perhaps the worst performer in Khufiya, awkwardly holds an American spy’s wife (Monica Rae) hostage in one of the movie’s goofier scenes.

My positive reception to that picture, however, did not lead me to pursue the rest of Bhardwaj’s filmography for whatever reason, perhaps due to my recent graduation from college not long after seeing Haider and my later intensive sampling of South Indian Cinema around the same time. Color me surprised, then, when I stumbled upon his latest movie, Khufiya (“Secret”), on Netflix almost by accident, like so many undermarketed features that get buried on the premiere streaming platform’s massive library. My unintended ignorance toward Bhardwaj’s filmography outside Haider may have been a blessing in disguise, however, as the only recent Netflix Original Film more baffling to me than Khufiya is the crime drama Kuttey (“Dogs”), the directorial debut of his son, Aasmaan Bhardwaj.

Before we get to the latter, though, let’s first dissect the confused, multilayered Khufiya. A late 1990s-early 2000s period piece about Indian spycraft and foreign affairs immediately following the Kargil War, Khufiya details a series of fictionalized black operations missions between India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh centered around protagonist Tabassum Fatima Hashmi (“Tabu”), a high ranking Research & Analysis Wing (RAW) operative. The film starts well enough with a foiled assassination of main antagonist Shataf Figar, a Bangladeshi military leader sympathetic to Pakistan, by Tabu’s quasi-love interest, Bangladeshi actress Azmeri Haque Badhon, but the film wastes much of this opening momentum on a poorly paced story, hamfisted dialogue, and an inconsistent supporting cast.

I think Khufiya’s biggest problems all stem from how the movie feels like several movies condensed and spliced into one, how its narrative transitions into different episodic arcs between acts. These transitions are jarring and inorganic, shifting from a straightforward spy thriller with an almost superfluous LGBTQ subplot to a weird, uninteresting family drama about Tabu’s estranged ex-husband (Atul Kulkarni) and son (Meet Vohra) to an almost unintentionally comedic undercover refugee story set in the United States and obviously shot in modern day Canada. The latter segment involves supporting characters played by Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi, and Navnindra Bhel, and only tangentially connects to Tabu’s main character in the final couple sequences. 

In terms of direction, Aasmaan Bhardwaj’s Kuttey sports far greater cinematographic personality than his father’s latest feature, though not always for good reasons, and often at the expense of a cohesive, coherent story. Kuttey plays like a weak man’s attempt at a Reservoir Dogs (1992) or similar neo-noir crime drama, where the focus on audiovisual style derails minor script elements like justifiable character motivations, suspenseful narrative structure, or a satisfying conclusion. Aasmaan’s usage of slow-motion is decent and the geography of his shootouts is always clear, but these genre embellishments mean little when all the characters (Arjun Kapoor, Konkona Sen Sharma, Radhika Madan, Kumud Mishra, Tabu again… ) are unlikable and have the same type of obnoxious, awkwardly edited flashbacks. To end things on a bad note, Kuttey concludes its story on a farcical joke connected to a real life executive policy by the Narenda Modi government in 2016 that makes the entire story pointless, further illustrating its young co-writer-director’s bad sense of humor on display throughout the film.

You’ll lose track of how many Mexican standoffs occur in Kuttey, but they all contribute nothing to the greater story.

This father-son pairing of Khufiya and Kuttey demonstrate to me that either (A) Vishal Bhardwaj has lost some of his edge as he’s aged at the same time his son is attempting to find his artistic voice, or (B) that the former’s critical legacy with projects like Haider may be more of a fluke than many cinephiles might like to admit, which could imply Aasmaan benefits from Bollywood industry nepotism. Regardless of the long-term familial reasons for these two film’s underperformance, structurally they suffer from their artists’ obvious attempts to get too cute or too intellectual with their hybridized espionage/crime drama premises. Just because foreign intelligence officers have stressful family lives doesn’t mean we, as an audience, should automatically care more about them and their professional endeavors, nor does throwing numerous wacky, unlikable characters into a script make their heist adventure more memorable.

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SUMMARY & RECOMMENDATION: Like many auteur directors from various international film industries (e.g. Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, David Michôd, Anurag Kashyap, Paco Plaza, Shinsuke Sato, John Woo, Gareth Evans, Alejandro Iñárritu, Alfonso Cuarón, etc.), Vishal Bhardwaj has tried his hand at the world of online streaming, but I would put his work here toward the bottom of the list of recent streaming exclusives by notable filmmakers. Kuttey perhaps fares even worse despite its reasonable length (108 minutes) due to its mishandled cast, lame sense of humor, and wet fart of an ending.

— However… Khufiya contains traces of a good spy thriller yarn in between its weak, reductive analysis of sexual orientation and work-life balance, while Kuttey shows the Bhardwaj family eye for casual cinematic violence.

—> Both films are NOT RECOMMENDED unless you have nothing else to watch on your Netflix queue; and then, still don’t watch them.

? I like how Khufiya’s idea of “poor, struggling refugees” is living in a large two-story house in a peaceful, immaculately clean small town neighborhood.