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The roaring box office run of Dhurandhar 2 has once again brought the high-stakes world of India-Pakistan espionage into the spotlight. Spy operations, secret agents, and deadly missions that come at a great personal cost, this genre has produced some gems for Hindi cinema audiences.
If you cannot get over the Dhurandhar mania, here are five spy thrillers available to stream on OTT platforms that will give you a similar adrenaline rush.
Khufiya (2023)
Director: Vishal Bhardwaj
Cast: Tabu, Ali Fazal, Wamiqa Gabbi
Set in the murky corridors of India’s intelligence agencies, Khufiya is more a meditative piece on the personal price a spy pays for their job. Tabu plays a R&AW operative tasked with tracking down a mole leaking defence secrets, but the investigation soon delves into her own past.
Vishal Bhardwaj builds the narrative like a slow burn. It is less about chase sequences and more about silences, focussing on fractured relationships and moral ambiguity. The film’s strength lies in how it humanises espionage, showing operatives as people weighed down by loneliness as much as motivated by national duty.
Streaming on: Netflix
Raazi (2018)
Director: Meghna Gulzar
Cast: Alia Bhatt, Vicky Kaushal, Jaideep Ahlawat
Few Hindi spy films have matched the emotional stakes of Raazi. At its centre is Sehmat, played by Alia Bhatt, a young woman trained and sent across the border during the 1971 war under the guise of marriage into a Pakistani military family. Meghna Gulzar keeps the storytelling intimate, focussing on Sehmat’s inner conflict as she balances her feelings of love for her in-laws, with that of her loyalty to India. The film doesn’t glorify espionage, it shows its cost, especially when patriotism demands personal sacrifices.
Streaming on: Prime Video
Phantom (2015)
Director: Kabir Khan
Cast: Saif Ali Khan, Katrina Kaif
Inspired by the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks, Phantom features Saif Ali Khan as a disgraced soldier pulled back into service for an off-the-books mission to neutralise those responsible for the deadly terror attacks. Loosely inspired by Hussain Zaidi's book Mumbai Avengers, the narrative spun by Kabir Khan traverses across London, the US, Syria, and Pakistan, eliminating targets associated with the 2008 attacks, ultimately leading to a showdown between Saif’s character and the mastermind of the attacks. Kabir Khan delivers a certain catharsis that audiences often look for in such spy stories.
Streaming on: Prime Video
Baby (2015)
Director: Neeraj Pandey
Cast: Akshay Kumar, Anupam Kher, Taapsee Pannu
Baby is all about process — methodical, precise and relentless. Akshay Kumar leads a covert counter-terrorism unit operating under the radar, tasked with pre-empting threats before they hit Indian soil. The team’s biggest mission begins when they come across the location of a dreaded terrorist who was the mastermind behind the 2008 Mumbai attacks.
Neeraj Pandey strips away unnecessary melodrama, focussing instead on intelligence work as it unfolds: surveillance, interrogation, coordination. The film’s taut pacing and attention to operational detail make it one of the more enthralling entries in the genre.
Streaming on: Prime Video
D-Day (2013)
Director: Nikkhil Advani
Cast: Rishi Kapoor, Irrfan Khan, Arjun Rampal, Shruti Haasan
Arguably one of the finest espionage thrillers to have come out of Bollywood, D-Day follows a team of Indian agents sent to Karachi to capture Dawood Ibrahim, the dreaded terrorist responsible for the 1993 Mumbai blasts.
Irrfan Khan, who plays an Indian spy living in anonymity in Pakistan, anchors the narrative with a restrained performance. Rishi Kapoor, who plays a character inspired by Dawood Ibrahim, has a chilling menace. Nikkhil Advani doesn’t shy away from showing how quickly such missions can unravel, leaving behind consequences that are anything but heroic.
Streaming on: Netflix
