Alpha marks the YRF spy franchise's first female-led entry.
The baton is passed to Alia Bhatt and Sharvari.
However, Shiv Rawail's film feels as derivative and soulless as hastily problematic.
Alpha has been set up with great promise. Signalling it as the first female-led spy actioner to emerge from Hindi cinema is a seductive claim. That’s the hook for raking in audiences. But the illusion of any radical innovation promptly evaporates in the film’s opening itself. The Kargil War’s shadow is dredged up for the umpteen time to erect a tale about patriots and traitors, undercover missions and a father-daughter duo’s long-stalled reconciliation. All signs of how it actually is jaded beneath the front of empowering reversals are present as Alpha jet-starts the plot.
Raised in a remote facility in Thar as a guinea pig, Sita (Alia Bhatt) goes through painful rites of reconnecting with her snatched family. Rogue army officer Fateh (Bobby Deol) stole her as a baby from her father and his senior-turned-RAW Chief, Vikram (Anil Kapoor). Familial love is alien to her. She has to re-align herself fundamentally to absorb emotion, develop anchorage. She has been shorn of the wider world, regular experiences. Even birthdays don’t arrive with gifts but deadly missions that tie her entire sense of self to a purpose. Without any, she doesn’t know what she is or what she is capable of. Fateh pushes for an alpha serum that will breed a nearly invincible army. It fails once, with soldiers haemorrhaging to their deaths. Yet, Fateh doesn’t resign in his hopes. Sita is his experiment. It seems to work, as her senses are extraordinarily sharpened and she survives. Oh, and Sita is an adroit hacker, by the way. To what end does that benefit her? You wouldn’t be able to tell beyond cursory location trackers.
The screenplay by Sridhar Raghavan and Soumil Shukla gives free rein to rogue soldiers while disbursing woefully illogical scenes in rapid succession. Questions of funding are shown the door for the longest stretches until a final predictable revelation seals doubts. It’s not even a pivot so much as a confirmation of lingering suspicions. The templates are too lazy to forgive. Cherrapunji gets a grey, rainy palette that barely twitches. Alpha hops through Rajasthan, Ladakh, Kashmir and Nepal, speeding through jungles and monasteries with as much fecklessness as utter disregard for character motivation. The puddle of locations exudes no personality whatsoever. Even fancy Spain shows up to introduce the peppy sister of Sita, Durga (Sharvari). She’s as bubbly and naïve-looking as Sita is stoic and reserved.
There are some genuinely unnecessary action sequences, including the one where the sisters finally meet. We glimpse an impulse to be showy and spectacular just for the sake of it. Neither can I take a spy film that divests itself from geopolitics so erratically as long as possible, only to bung it in for engineering a final twist. It feels misleading and dangerously manipulative. Routine spiel on testing patriotism takes the backseat to a half-baked conceit involving the miracle serum. Plausibility quickly eyes the exit as exposition and backstories litter the screentime. Alpha doesn’t just struggle but altogether skips establishing a coherent, cohesive world. For stakes to sharply register, there ought to be a clearer outline of the players betting it out. Director Shiv Rawail inserts action randomly to cover up gaping loopholes. This maroons the film in a strangely vacuous space and mood. Actually, the space is so ill-defined I just kept seeing everyone as lone wolves out to knock down the other and fulfil their long-festering vengeance.
I have a cudgel to pick with any film that dissociates from political gambles only to dive back into it and draw out divides further for mere dramatic intrigue. There’s a spuriousness, a dishonesty that betrays a film’s soul beneath the glitter of newness. Deol keeps furiously glowering like his life depends on it. The dialogues couldn’t get anymore ludicrous. Bhatt and Sharvari never build a wholly compelling dynamic that would be able to guarantee emotional investment. Since this doesn’t bloom, despite misfired efforts to develop intimacy and trust within generic montages in Kashmir, Alpha suffers. Sister-bonding is limited to the mould of Durga egging Sita to drop her tough-girl act.
However, the cuteness is fast shunted by the frantic action. Sita’s trauma is confined to her brittle façade alone. Socially, she can flit effortlessly, though she ensures there’s barely any need for that. While Bhatt and Sharvari land their inaugural rough and tumble, the action in Alpha skates between serviceable and eye-glazing versions of bland. There’s ample fuss, noise and artillery, but the characters are too slim to tether the action to something commanding and irresistible. Alpha lacks the spunk and grit to make a drama riveting and destabilising. It’s as glib as late, anxious shuffles to posit an enemy country’s plot that has apparently been in the works for years. Buying into this film’s lurches is a bigger ask than YRF haggling to be rewarded for mounting a female-led actioner.
