When War 2 released, it was almost certain that the tonality of YRF’s spy universe had gone beyond the salvageable point. And when it came to Alpha, the latest addition to the spy universe, there were reports of reshoots happening to the movie, and the release was almost delayed by 6 months. Well, Alpha was conceived at a time when YRF thought everything was great about the spy universe. Hence, the formulaic template they have gotten used to is there in the core of Alpha, and that is something you can’t fix through post-production. With the visual aesthetic having some noticeable changes from the rest of the movies in the universe, the only good thing about Alpha is that it is better than War 2.
Colonel Fateh Singh Lakhawat was a patriot who thought India should do something bigger and better to defeat Pakistan. So he decided to create this plan to prepare super soldiers with trained special capabilities, and he called the program Alpha. Unfortunately, the program lost government support at one point. But a determined Fateh went on with the program in his own capacity. How he manages to train a young girl under the Alpha project is what we see in this movie.
The story credit of this movie is given to producer Aditya Chopra’s younger brother, Uday Chopra. And if I am not wrong, the buzz around YRF thinking about a female-led spy universe movie surfaced on the internet in 2023, post the gigantic success of Pathaan. Looking at the way Alpha is imagined, I pretty much feel Uday Chopra may have called Aditya Chopra and said we should consider making something like a Black Widow in the spy universe. I am saying this because there are way too many things in Alpha that feel borrowed from the Black Widow movie. SPOILER ALERT! From the costumes and stunts to family dynamics, Alpha feels pretty much like what if Natasha Romanoff’s story ended up in YRF’s office.
One of the fundamental problems of the spy universe was the way it was thinking that the audience was flocking into theaters just to see the stars. I think the success of something like Dhurandhar and the failure of an anticipated War 2 made it clear that green screen garbage won’t be tolerated by the audience. One thing they used to do in that process of underestimating the audience was the way they explained the plot through characters for the audience to understand. Despite doing reshoots and stuff to reduce the damage, no creative heads in YRF wanted to reduce the spoon-feeding in the writing. At the beginning of the movie, we have Fateh Singh explaining his Alpha program to the most intelligent minds of the country. And when you listen to how Fateh explains the whole thing to these people, you would feel like asking whether they are this dumb?
The major selling element of all the movies in this franchise is the set pieces, and that is an area where Alpha is struggling because of its lead actor. The introduction scene of Alia Bhatt in the movie has her coming to a place on a bike, and the posture throughout that whole sequence felt very forceful. There is a lack of flexibility that makes the fight sequences in the movie look lifeless. And it becomes way too evident when the cameo drops. Those who have seen the trailer would know that Hrithik is part of the movie, and there is a fight sequence in the movie featuring him as Kabir. While he was making the moves in a butter-smooth way, Alia, with that Black Widow attitude, was struggling to find the swagger. One could see the bad guys and Hrithik sort of waiting and helping both the women to punch or do a somersault. In the climax fight, there is a moment where a bunch of army people are running in, shooting the enemy, and the way they were running, it looked like they would kill their own men before the enemy could.
Shiv Rawail, who previously directed the series Railway Men for YRF, is in the director’s chair. Even though he has made some tweaks to the visual language of this movie, he isn’t doing anything to fix the verbal overdose that is making the film silly. No matter how much criticism they face, YRF won’t stop going to foreign locations for songs. And even in a movie like Alpha, where the main character has grown up in a closed shelter with no major contact with the outer world, they have managed to squeeze in swimsuit shots of both the ladies. Well, that’s the only area where gender equality was done properly in this universe. To hide the face of the dupe or the flaws in the action shots, editor Aarif Sheikh has gone on a chopping spree, and you just won’t get any idea of who is getting beaten by whom. The music is largely in the typical space you see in YRF spy movies, and some of the theme tracks are getting used excessively to feel like a build-up.
There is a moment in the movie where Sharvari’s character says to Alia’s Sita, when are you going to stop this ‘I don’t give a damn, bitch” attitude? And I thought it was actually dialogue writer Ishita Moitra giving a review of Alia’s performance. The lack of emotion Alia tries to portray feels so fake, and hence you will rarely feel any sense of empathy towards this character for what she had to go through. Sharvari, on the other hand, is your typical YRF leading lady with song, dance, and an unnecessary bubbly attitude. Even though her character has these annoying characteristics, she was smoother and more confident in many of the scenes. Anil Kapoor plays the role of the father-figure, RAW chief, and he was able to bring some respectability to those basic dialogues. Bobby Deol has the persona to be this passionate patriot, and with that voice modulation (similar to the one SRK did in Jawan), he looks intimidating on screen. But the twist in the tale associated with that character would make you say “here we go again!”
The chances of this being the final film in the YRF spy universe are really high, and while I was watching this movie, I was thinking about Ek Tha Tiger, which had a very grounded feel and was such a cool movie. From that Kabir Khan movie, which was shot mostly on real locations, the spy universe has become this green screen-heavy, template stories, and this time the plot has serums and stuff. Looking at how they have designed this universe, it seems very impossible to add a grounded sensibility to it at this stage.
