Director: Shiv Rawail
Writers: Soumil Shukla, Shridhar Raghavan
Stars: Alia Bhatt, Sharvari, Bobby Deol
Synopsis: Driven by revenge, a young girl destroys anyone in her path until her journey uncovers the hidden truths of her own life. She is bold, cold, and ready to cross any line, hurting anyone who stands in her way.
The YRF Spy Universe has come to its natural end with Alpha (not to be confused with Julia Ducournau’s body horror film of the same name, which is actually good, contrary to popular belief), the seventh installment in a related cinematic universe of spy films distributed by Yash Raj Films. While Aditya Chopra seems intent on continuing this pointless franchise, the films have experienced diminishing returns both critically and commercially, with this latest endeavor not making it to the top ten of the North American box office, while previous titles, particularly Siddarth Anand’s Pathaan, broke records around the world.
A limp and lifeless actioner from beginning to end, Alpha starts relatively simple by keeping the bare bones of the plot as a revenge story. Director Shiv Rawail spends a significant amount of time fleshing out R&AW chief Vikrant Kaul’s (Anil Kapoor) past and his relationship with Indian Army Colonel Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol). The two are part of a top-secret program of elite supersoldiers who are injected with a formula called “Alpha,” which enhances both their physical and mental capabilities, enabling them to perform tasks the average soldier cannot. This is basically Captain America: The Winter Soldier if you generate the screenplay off ChatGPT.
Kaul’s pregnant wife (Dia Mirza) is diagnosed with congenital heart disease and is recommended by their doctor to terminate the pregnancy to save her life. However, she wants to follow through with her pregnancy, even being fully cognizant of the fact that, even if her children are born safely, she likely won’t survive. Thinking he will heal her medical condition, Kaul injects the Alpha serum on her wife, which initially proves successful, but becomes fatal once they realize all the supersoldiers who tried the substance died of a brain hemorrhage. Vikrant’s child, Sita (Alia Bhatt), is born but is immediately declared state property so Fateh and Dr. John Verghese (Dibyendu Bhattacharya) can conduct experiments on her to determine whether the Alpha serum worked. Fateh tells Kaul that Sita died shortly after being born, which leaves him devastated. Many years pass, and Sita has become an elite assassin tasked with killing the people her “Baba” deems traitors, including her father, Vikrant Kaul.
The movie takes a long while to get its rudimentary plot going, but it never really picks up the pace once everything is set in motion. The screenplay by Soumil Shukla and Shridhar Raghavan sets up what is essentially a highly traditional, classic story that doesn’t really reinvent the espionage wheel, especially when it focuses on Sita. We see every single beat coming a mile away, notably when the film focuses on meeting her father for the first time and Durga (Sharvari), her estranged twin sister.
One wonders why the movie lasts an eternal 140 minutes, knowing exactly how this entire thing will end. There are fractures within the family once they meet for the first time. Sita doesn’t believe in Kaul and Durga, but will soon realize they’re telling the truth. What do you think will happen once the three unite to stop Fateh? Do I even need to lay it out? It’s as predictable as you think, and takes very little narrative and thematic risks as the runtime trudges through its gun-toting and flag-waving climax.
I’ll give Rawail this: he knows how to craft efficiently mounted action of real tactical power. The fight between Sita and Durga is a major highlight because it illustrates their respective quick wit and skills. They are not equals, and each has their specific style they try to overcome, but in vain. In fact, the action functions better when it’s comedic than when it’s deathly serious and attempts to create a sense of dread in the audience. The film’s climax doesn’t work because it takes itself far too seriously. At that point, the action is also painfully incomprehensible and doesn’t possess the same emotional weight as when Ayan Mukerji staged the final confrontation of War 2 with enough homoerotic tension to make us forgive its message at the center of the picture.
Speaking of War, the only moment of true entertainment comes when Hrithik Roshan appears as Kabir in a playful action sequence that shows exactly where the YRF Spy Universe thrives. When the characters unite or don’t think too much about how serious the story should get and just have fun, you get something that plays with the anticipation of seeing a fan favorite character return and deliver proper carnage, the likes of which you haven’t seen from him at all. It also speaks to Roshan’s personality as a star who knows exactly when to step into the spotlight and control the camera’s focus, while Bhatt and Sharvari, unfortunately, don’t have that same pull.
The movie can’t work if the chemistry between the two leads fails, and this is exactly what happens here. Of course, the two hold their own magnificently within Alpha’s various action sequences, but when Rawail stops the bloodletting and attempts to add texture to the characters, it barely registers as credible. Kapoor, on the other hand, while his character was once interesting, is reduced to a mouthpiece of government propaganda.
This is also where Alpha becomes more insidious than a simple but familiar espionage thriller. Had it stayed in the formulaic heights set up by its pre-intermission half, perhaps it would be remembered as nothing more than a paint-by-numbers spy movie that doesn’t do much to reinvent anything, but is watchable enough to be mildly entertaining. The franchise has run its course; maybe it’s time to end it, right?
According to Rawail, this isn’t enough, and it’s probably why the baffling twist related to Deol’s character opens the movie up in the broadly nationalistic strokes that have defined this politically misguided franchise. Without giving anything away, it turns what could’ve been a compelling antagonist into a mustache-twirling villain with ulterior motives that make less narrative sense as more is known about him. Rawail also goes to the John Kramer school of making middle-aged characters younger through their fit, and gives him one of the worst wigs ever conceived for a major blockbuster.
Through and through, Alpha is lazy, pedestrian filmmaking that might not have been so terrible if Rawail didn’t take the jingoistic route and didn’t end his movie with the most baffling line I’ve ever heard this side of Timur Bekmambetov’s Mercy’s “Human or AI: We all make mistakes.” Even I, someone with only a passing knowledge of India’s political situation, couldn’t believe that an actor of the same caliber as Anil Kapoor would say something in the lines of “For the best boss in the world: India.”
No. Just no.
