 "Mukhbir The Story of a Spy review: A different kind of espionage thriller that mostly works")
Language: Hindi
Director: Shivam Nair, Jayprad Desai
Cast: Prakash Raj, Harsh Chhaya, Barkha Sengupta, Satyadeep Mishra, Karan Oberoi, Adil Hussain, Zain Khan Durrani, Zoya Afroz
In a scene from Zee5’s _Mukhbir: The Story of a Spy_, an intelligence officer is left baffled after his senior calls him naïve. “Don’t be overdramatic,” another one says, without a sense of stern finality. The 8-episode series set in the aftermath of the Sino-Indian war grasps the world of espionage at a tender moment in our history. Wounded from a symbolic loss, these are men in post-Independence India, second-guessing their hunches. All of which makes Mukhbir the kind of thriller that is neither rushed nor presumptive about its own meticulous details. It is in fact staggered, even ponderous at times, echoing possibly the stuttering approach to real-world examinations that India learned from, by failing.
Set in the aftermath of war, Mukhbir is largely the story of Harfan, a charismatic but also cocky spy who is sent across the border to infiltrate not just the Pakistani military leadership but also a humble native family. In terms of premise, this sounds almost like an encore of Meghna Gulzar’s terrific Raazi but in terms of the narrative, there is plenty that’s different. In Mukhbir we don’t just stand in the corridors but enter the rooms of the Pakistani generals, even dissenters. “Awaam ki bhookh se badi zimedaari koi nahi hain,” a critic of the country’s obscenely powerful military regime tells his daughter in a personal conversation. His disdain for the country’s corrupt military he doesn’t hide from the men in uniform either.
Harfan, played Zain Khan Durrani, is your regular, handsome but overconfident protagonist who though he struts past situations, isn’t always assured in the face of challenges. The series, however, belongs to the supporting actors. Atul Kumar is terrific as a brutish, repugnant Brigadier Habibullah while Harsh Chhaya is sinister as ever as Major General Agha Khan. Prakash Raj aptly captures the restrained mannerism of senior agent SKS Moorthy, while Adil Hussain is dependable as ever as Intelligence Lead Ramkishore Negi. Most actors pull their weight in a series that though thin on high-decibel thrill, is always brimming with cautionary tension; a series that feels perpetually on the edge of war, told through the eyes of men who aren’t necessarily prepared for it.
Most espionage thrillers often frame their characters as supremely intelligent beings who know their way around the stickiness of an uneven landscape. But Mukhbir is brave enough to import into the world of espionage the ungainly sight of error and malfunction. Things go wrong with stunning regularity here and it humanises an era when espionage as a state function was possibly at its incubatory stage. Junior officers are hammered, jobs threatened and nobody pretends to wear the cloak of unrivalled genius. In a scene clutching at some sort of depraved irony a malfunctioning telecom system is fixed in real-time with the help of a Russian translator. Failure here is alarming but also the building block to cracking something bigger.
Games
View AllThe series’ desire to explore Pakistani characters beyond the basic rank-and-command grins can both be its strength and its weakness. Most military men on the other side of the border are shown as uncouth, foul-mouthed chauvinists, far more sinister in their make-up than the devious plans for violence they are identified by. In comparison, the Indian side is shown as genteel, mannered and humble in its pursuit of everyday life. There is real value to diving under the skin of the antagonist here but it can at times look and sound like the conveniently airbrushed version of men we have become used to consuming as enemies. In contrast, the thread connecting Harfan’s cloak of performance to the resident Pakistani family still struggling to get over the partition is one of the more intriguing sub-plots in a show that doesn’t shy away from commenting on the nature of conflict. The only problem is that far too less time is spent considering the importance of reluctance in the favour of the more direct and boorish men waiting to wage war.
Directed by Shivam Nair and Jayprad Desai, Mukhbir gets its tonality and texture right. It feels immersive, despite its limited visual scope and is ably shouldered by some fine actors who must toe the line between ‘intelligence’ and regular failure. The show can feel heavy-footed at times but through its hesitant stamp of authority, it faithfully recreates an age where confidence and competence never quite collaborated the way make-believe espionage thrillers usually do. This was an era of dogged work, of unseemly, modest heroes learning the trade by regularly struggling at it. Mukhbir may not always exhibit the kind of writing that holds thrillers together – especially a couple of romantic angles - but in terms of tonality and pace, it is largely on the money.
Mukhbir The Story of a Spy is streaming on Zee5
Manik Sharma writes on art and culture, cinema, books, and everything in between.
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