Toronto, Oct. 5 -- 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 conve...