Toronto: Another secret mission, another spy and another trip across the border. Bollywood seems reluctant to put its fictional intelligence officers on leave. With Kunal Kemmu’s Vibe and now Ayushmann Khurrana’s Udta Teer bringing comedy into the espionage mix, a question feels overdue: can the Hindi film industry find something else to get excited about?
Vibe features Kemmu and Sparsh Shrivastava as unlikely recruits to the world of espionage. Udta Teer, meanwhile, introduces Khurrana as a Pakistani spy who loses his memory and comes to believe he is an Indian agent. Different comic situations, certainly, but both return to a genre that already occupies plenty of space in mainstream Hindi cinema.
In the post-Dhurandhar conversation, that familiarity is becoming difficult to ignore. A serious spy thriller can lean on danger and suspense, while a comedy can turn the same world into a series of misunderstandings. But changing the tone does not automatically make the setting feel fresh.
How many more secret missions?
Espionage offers filmmakers plenty to work with: deception, divided loyalties, moral dilemmas and characters who cannot reveal who they really are. There is room for inventive storytelling here. The frustration begins when the India-Pakistan angle starts feeling like the easiest way to give a plot its stakes.
Does every threat need to come from across the border? Does patriotism always need an intelligence operation to find its way into a screenplay? And must even a comedy return to this familiar territory?
India offers enough contradictions, ambitions, family tensions and everyday absurdities to sustain countless stories. A neighbourhood dispute, a disastrous workplace or a friendship falling apart can be just as entertaining as an undercover mission, provided someone writes it well.
Give the writing more attention
Neither a familiar premise nor a trailer alone can decide whether an entire film works. Udta Teer deserves to be judged on its finished story, performances and humour. Equally, questioning the industry’s repeated choices does not mean dismissing every film within the genre.
The bigger demand is for variety, and for producers to give original writing the attention they give a promotional campaign. Hire writers with different experiences. Give them time to develop characters. Back a screenplay even when its pitch cannot be reduced to a star, a mission and an enemy.
Promotions can make a film impossible to miss. They cannot make a predictable scene surprising or a weak joke funny.
Bollywood can keep sending its heroes on secret missions. But perhaps its next big search should be for a story that feels worth telling.
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