Alpha is a botched up opportunity, rues Sukanya Verma.
Key Points
- Alpha, despite its female leads Alia Bhatt and Sharvari, struggles to establish a strong identity, falling into generic action tropes and failing to empower its characters beyond male-dictated narratives.
- The film borrows heavily from Hollywood spy thrillers like Black Widow and La Femme Nikita, but lacks the star power and scale that elevated previous YRF spy films like Tiger and Pathaan.
- Alia’s portrayal as a super soldier, despite her acting prowess in other genres, doesn’t naturally fit the larger-than-life action heroine mould, with her character relying on ’empty attitude and endless gunfire’.
The YRF spy universe may pride itself on crossovers but the only connection it has ever established is superstar cameos make for crowd-pleasing attractions every time they get each other’s back in lavishly mounted action set pieces.
Even at their scene stealing best — think Katrina Kaif’s towel clad fisticuffs in Tiger 3 or Deepika Padukone’s ice skating chase in Pathaan — the ladies must settle for secondary status. In Alpha, women are shown as the face of the franchise but still dictated by men in power as fathers and foes they must contend with for the sake of spinoffs.
Director Shiv Rawail’s half-hearted diversion from the male-dominated genre means to give the girls their due but only ends up failing their cause in a generic, lacklustre actioner.
Hollywood Tropes and Lacklustre Plot
Borrowing liberally from Hollywood tropes and templates, I found myself reminded of everything from Black Widow to La Femme Nikita to Hanna to Stranger Things to, hell yes, Kung Fu Panda.
Plot was never a strong suit of the likes of Tiger, Pathaan and War but the pull of stardom and scale of globetrotting charisma elevated their wafer-thin existence to guilty pleasure.
In Alpha though, suspension of disbelief unlocks a new level as super soldier Alia Bhatt takes on an army of commandos. It’s a fairly fanciful scenario, which even Uday Chopra (credited for its story) seems to realise and introduces the presence of an all-powerful serum in her bloodstream to defend the possibility.
There’s no doubt about Alia’s ‘though she be but little she is fierce’ prowess and espionage dramas are hardly novel territory.
In Raazi, her intensity compensated for her physicality. Ditto for her Hollywood debut, Heart of Stone. Jigra, too, pushed those very buttons to convey an emotionally damaged human consumed by saving her sibling.
Although when cast in the Angelina Jolie and Scarlet Johannson mould of larger-than-life daredevils, it’s a fit that doesn’t come naturally to Alia.
She doesn&’t have the aura to pull it off despite her best efforts in braided hair, toned physique and yards of spandex. Her lazily-written character, like the rest of the film, relies on empty attitude and endless gunfire to find its feet.
A Man’s World and Unconvincing Action
For all the subversive suggestions in the title, Alpha is nothing but a random Greek reference alongside an Operation Odyssey. It’s still a man’s world in Bollywood as Anil Kapoor and Bobby Deol employ their grizzly appeal to play army men and provide daddy issues to Alia’s serum-injected lab rat gone rogue.
Her name’s Sita while Sharvari, part sibling, part sidekick, goes by Durga.
Bollywood’s belief in naming the leading ladies after Indian goddesses is half the job done is as misplaced as their commitment to one-note, gun toting action figures.
Girls just wanna have guns. Why not? Mind of their own? Absolutely not.
Another problem. There’s not one fun bone in Alpha’s body. And throwing a schezwan sauce ad placement in the middle of a reunion only adds to the embarrassment.
Where Alia’s over serious stance is a flat out bore, Sharvari’s school girl excitement renders her slightly more alive in Alpha‘s increasingly dull entertainment. Introduced like a mistress-of-all-trades, Sharvari’s supposedly warrior skills are phased out to focus on Alia’s solo scenes. Both are compelling actors but neither an action heroine.
In Alpha‘s silly worldview, spies in hiding are found more easily than cookies in a kitchen and agents like Gods appear out of thin air wherever and whenever they need to and confront the opponent.
Glossy as it may be, filmed across parts of Spain, Kashmir and Ladakh, the action is completely unconvincing. Half the time it’s not the people but the camera that’s moving violently to convey the kicks and punches at play. Only the music department (Sanchit Balhara and Ankit Balhara) appears to have understood the brief doling out an adrenalin-pumping electronic score.
Missed Opportunity and Stale Performances
Post Dhurandhar‘s success, effects of the India-Pakistan conflict show in the reverse antics of an intelligence agent’s contrived backstory.
At heart, of course it’s still a typical Yashraj exercise, finding any excuse to show off its fit heroines in skin-hugging or baring outfits. And so Sita and Durga’s sisterhood blossoms over semi-skinny dipping and trekking on scenic mountains.
For special appearance purposes, Hrithik Roshan shows up and suffers dialogues like ‘Yeh sadhu nahi fadu hai‘ as badass heroines transform into beaming fangirls flanking him on either side.
Doing most of the brawny heavy-lifting, Bobby Deol’s ferocity feels stale in a script playing musical chairs with his constant claims of desh bhakti.
‘I am dying to meet you soldier,’ he tells someone as though threatening us with a sequel of his 1998 hit.
Meanwhile, his colleague Anil Kapoor looks all prepped up and nowhere to go in a movie where his role is akin to the police of old Hindi films always arriving late and in the end.
Ultimately, Alpha is a botched up opportunity. It’s sad but I would rather watch Deepika in Pathaan and Katrina in the Tiger series kick ass in second fiddle capacity than become toys of their own story.
