Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
It’s strange for a film built on action, patriotism, brotherhood – or in this case, sisterhood – to spend most of its runtime behaving like a family melodrama. In its attempt to become the alpha of YRF’s Spy Universe, Alpha ends up looking more like a baby that still has a lot of growing up to do. That doesn’t mean it is without potential. It just means the film never becomes what it promises to be.
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The biggest strength of Alpha is Alia Bhatt. The makers have played their strongest card well. The story begins with Sita being kidnapped by Bobby Deol‘s Colonel Lakhawat as a child and trained to become an assassin under his ‘alpha’ programme for the country. Years later, when she sets out to eliminate the very people who turned her into a weapon, a twist changes the course of her mission.
As long as Sita is on that relentless killing spree, Alpha remains engaging. Alia is agile, convincing and completely at ease in the action sequences. She throws punches with confidence, handles the stunt choreography effortlessly and carries the physicality of the role remarkably and surprisingly well. Ironically, it is when she stops fighting that the film begins to lose steam. Every time the action pauses, the narrative slips into emotional detours that rarely justify the time they consume. Add Dia Mirza, playing RAW Chief Vikrant Luthra’s wife Janki, and Dibyendu Bhattacharya as a scientist to make it more melodramatic than it is supposed to be.
That unevenness becomes Alpha‘s biggest problem. The film keeps piling on twists, and while a few works, the constant barrage eventually becomes exhausting. Instead of building intrigue, the screenplay focusses more on building shock value.
The second blow is the story itself. It swings endlessly between spy thriller and emotionally overloaded family drama – there is a dead mother, a stolen childhood, a father weighed down by guilt, and a sister haunted by what could have been. Every emotional beat arrives with maximum volume, making Alpha perhaps the most self-consciously emotional film in the Spy Universe. The emotional manipulation becomes so relentless that it starts overshadowing the real work: the action, the espionage, the thrill and the style of this universe.
One thing the film thankfully gets right is staying away from romance. Adding a love story would have been the biggest disservice to a film led by women, driven by women and fundamentally about women.
Alia and Sharvari, as Sita and Durga, are forces in their own right. They are never damsels waiting to be rescued. They see danger coming, make decisions and fight their own battles. Which is exactly why it feels so jarring when the film repeatedly chooses to sexualise Sharvari.
There are bikini shots, shorts and bralettes in freezing Kashmir, backless bodysuits during combat sequences – all presented as glamour rather than necessity. None of it adds anything to the story. The entire point of Alpha is to establish women as capable weapons within this spy universe, fighting for survival, family and country – not to impress the audience with perfectly curated glamour shots.
You don’t see Hrithik Roshan taking down terrorists in a backless vest. You don’t see Shah Rukh Khan shooting enemies in skin-tight leggings. So why should Alpha insist on dressing its women for the male gaze while simultaneously asking us to celebrate them as formidable action heroes?
Reducing Sharvari into a sexualised doll who occasionally gets to perform action keeps pricking throughout the film. It becomes impossible to ignore.
The supporting cast doesn’t help matters either. Anil Kapoor, as the RAW chief, brings little beyond dialoguebaazi. Bobby Deol, meanwhile, seems determined to recreate the intimidating aura of Abrar from Animal. The intense stare and sculpted physique certainly add style, but menace cannot be pretended through body language alone. The writing doesn’t give him enough substance.
Even Hrithik Roshan’s Kabir Dhaliwal feels like a last-minute addition. His entry is designed for whistles, but once the cheering fades, it exposes a simple question: why is he even here? The sequence contributes almost nothing to the narrative and feels more like franchise maintenance than storytelling.
Ironically, that leaves Alpha as an almost complete Alia Bhatt show. That is both the film’s greatest blessing and one of its biggest weaknesses. Alia does nearly all the heavy lifting, but one strong performance cannot compensate for an inconsistent screenplay. At some point, you stop caring about who is chasing whom, what the mission is, or where exactly the story is heading.
Just when the film begins to lose you, it offers an unexpected sense of deja vu – not from its own Spy Universe, but from another spy world altogether: Dhurandhar. The comparison isn’t flattering. It serves as a reminder of how much sharper, more gripping and confident a spy thriller can be.
One aspect Alpha deserves credit for is refusing to hide behind the familiar “dushman mulk” euphemism. It names Pakistan directly, acknowledges cross-border operations and avoids the performative Aman Ki Aasha diplomacy that its own previous films leaned on. That clarity is refreshing. The only disappointment is that the film never explores the idea with the conviction it deserves.
For a debut feature, Shiv Rawail still delivers a better-directed film than Ayan Mukerji managed with War 2. Even with its sluggish screenplay, Alpha is more coherent than the expensive spoof that War 2 often resembled. There are flashes of ambition, well-mounted action and glimpses of what the film could have been. But glimpses are not enough.
The last truly satisfying film from this universe was War back in 2019. Since then, the graph has steadily dipped. Alpha doesn’t drag it further down, but it certainly doesn’t raise the bar either.
Strip away the Liril-ad-like swimming montage, the unnecessary Hrithik cameo and a generous portion of the family melodrama, and there is probably a fairly decent spy thriller hiding underneath.
Instead, Alpha spends so much time trying to prove it has a heart that it forgets it was supposed to have a pulse too. In the race to become the alpha of the Spy Universe, it barely manages to survive as a cub.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
