Credibility is an important attribute when telling any tale, more so if it is around India’s national security. Yash Raj’s spy universe for long operated with the ability to make viewers suspend their belief and instead soak in the foreign locales, the choreographed stunt set-pieces, the songs and the swagger on display. That is until Dhurandhar entered the spy landscape.
Suddenly, reality became a mainstay, the threat all too actual, to make the film an immersive experience. Alpha, YRF’s first women-centred narrative in the testosterone-heavy spy universe, arrives in that environment, wherein it will be measured not against Pathaan, Tiger, War et al but against the world Aditya Dhar created in Dhurandhar.
On paper, its premise appears interesting. The Indian Army, along with top scientists, has developed a serum, named Alpha, which has the ability to birth super soldiers. But its power comes with a caveat: it seems to be causing more casualties. Just when you think its powers are exaggerated, a colonel (Anil Kapoor) tries it on his own pregnant wife (Dia Mirza) to save her and their kid’s life. While the wife dies, a prized soldier in Sita is born and survives.
The circumstances under which Sita (Alia Bhatt) is trained is where the conflict and drama lies. Pity then that the writers of Alpha are not even remotely interested to explore the emotional and psychological impact of a woman being isolated from society, caged liked a guinea pig, and raised and groomed by a man (Bobby Deol with one eyebrow perpetually arched) with dubious intent. It’s a horrid scenario, but there’s all of one scene to talk of the scars and its toll on Sita.
Instead, the Shiv Rawail-directed Alpha aspires to follow many arcs—father-daughter, siblings, Hitleresque mentor-betrayed protg, a fighter gone rogue with a cause—and have what now are tropes of the spy action genre: the patriot act, the de facto antagonist from across the border, loud background score. The culmination of this heavy concoction is a film that struggles to be memorable or engaging.
Alpha also suffers from the treat-your-audience-as-dumb syndrome, a growing affliction in the film industry. It results in a spate of dialogues where characters spell out not just their bios but their intent. Nothing is left to the imagination here. How else does one explain a line like “Woh landing code nahin, enemy code tha?”
That it is all executed in the most vanilla manner is part of Alpha’s own downfall. That a line like “What the hell is going on?” drew unwarranted laughs in the show this reviewer attended tells you everything.
In what’s her second full-on action avatar after Jigra, Alia gets a sheroine entry in Alpha. The body count is high, the carnage caused huge, yet she struggles to showcase an aura that makes Sita imposing or tough. There’s the same aloofness seen in Jigra, but the stoicism doesn’t translate into something that’s thrilling to behold.
Of course, to compliment Sita’s anti-social ways, there’s Sharvari’s Durga whose introduction here is the familiar YRF foreign-set song. Next to nothing about Durga’s character fits into the contours of logic—she is a parkour athlete, a dancer, a shooter among other things in Valladolid (Spain), but Sharvari does her bits with sincerity even if it is of little merit. The attempts to develop a bond between the two using a song and half-baked humour fail to land.
Even by YRF’s lofty standards of cameos in spy films, Alpha has one that seems tepid at best. Hrithik Roshan is easy on the eyes but given too little to do here. That Alpha exists in a landscape where hyper, often toxic, masculinity has swamped the action film genre, is a wonder in itself. “Ziddi ladkiyan hi duniya badalti hai,” says Dia Mirza’s character in what’s the only time Alpha offers a moment of purpose. Only if the makers had made genuine effort to illustrate this statement. Wonder woman she may be, but inspiring she ain’t.
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