Alpha Movie Review:
After her husband played a different kind of alpha in Animal (2023), Alia Bhatt arrives to kick some man rears in YRF spy-universe’s first female-led actioner Alpha. Here girls get more agency than the freedom of choosing their partners. They get it done. They can man a machine gun, throw deadly knives, break limbs and climb mountains in shorts and sneakers, all while being powered by some Scooty Pep ad optimism: “Stubborn girls change the world.”
Director: Shiv Rawail
Cast: Alia Bhatt, Sharvari, Bobby Deol, Anil Kapoor and Dia Mirza
The plot is spy-universe 101. After the 1999 Kargil War, self-proclaimed patriot Colonel Fateh (Bobby Deol) comes up with a secret program called ‘Alpha’, which constitutes of injecting jawans with a serum to turn them into super soldiers. Basically, Captain America for dummies. The program is greenlit by Fateh’s mentor and ultimately the R&AW chief Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor). The experiment is successful at first but ultimately the serum kills off its subjects. Alpha is dismantled and Fateh is demoted to man a base in Cherrapunji, an odd setting, seemingly chosen only for the purpose of a rain-soaked climax. He, however, continues to experiment with the serum since now he has his first successful test subject, Sita (Alia Bhatt), a girl whose mother was injected with the serum when she was pregnant. He raises and trains her in confinement. Sita grows up lonely, like a lab rat, and now all she wants is to get back at Fateh, to avenge her lost childhood.
All of this is merely told to us. Sita’s sad upbringing is reduced to a lazy montage. When the film begins, she is already going against Fateh. We are filled into their relationship via some afterthought flashbacks. Alpha relies on this device a lot. Something happens and it is later explained via a flashback. The film is spelt out so much that in a scene Alia’s Sita is saying-out-loud everything she is doing (She takes a sip of a liquid, spits it out and then says she hates coffee. Then why drink it in the first place?). The mythological references are unnecessary piled on (“Sita has come to burn Lanka.”) Even Sharvari’s character is named Durga only to equate the villains with the evil rakshasas.
Alpha is a stale, reheated dish from YRF’s assembly-line kitchen. Alia’s all-black combat outfits seem to be a result of plundering Lara Croft’s wardrobe. An action sequence involving bullets reminded me of The Matrix series. There seems to be no original idea in the film and the whole spy prototype seems to be lifted from The Mission Impossible franchise. The action has incessant slow-motion shots to make up for the lack of emotion and even the background music fails to add any propulsion. Alia seems to be stuck in her Jigra (2024) mannerisms and Bobby’s Haryanvi accent comes and goes. Sharvari, who has been showcasing her prowess lately, gets very less to play with as a stock, bubbly cool-chick character. Think Anushka Sharma in Jab Tak Hai Jaan (2012) but with some military training. For some reason, she gets an entry song in Spain which seems like a sports-bra ad. Even Hrithik Roshan’s cameo, spoiled because of the trailer, is nothing deeper than a Mountain Dew commercial.
After the abysmal War 2 (2025), the downward spiral for YRF’s spy universe continues with Alpha. The film seems an unnecessary, merely-for-gender-diversity addition to the already stretched franchise. For a film series walking on the footprints of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, there is not a cheeky or inside joke in Alpha, which the MCU on the other hand made a brand out of. The writing is plain, predictable and often tiring, with plastic characters with plastic emotions mouthing plastic lines. There is no personality to Alpha, no artistic voice. It is merely a product which has long expired its shelf life.
