Growing up watching Angelina Jolie effortlessly take down enemies in Salt, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, and Wanted — or admiring the stylish fight choreography of Charlie’s Angels — there’s a particular thrill that comes from watching a female lead perform action with total confidence on screen. Alia Bhatt’s Alpha isn’t just Yash Raj Films’ ambitious attempt to bring a female “lean, mean killing machine” to Hindi cinema — it’s also meant to fulfil fans’ long-standing wish to see a woman headline a full-fledged action spectacle.
(Spoilers for Alpha ahead!)
Alpha feels like a 140-minute deja vu
After watching Alpha, it’s safe to say we’re not there yet — and not because the actors don’t have it in them. The writers and filmmakers simply aren’t giving them the chance to be taken seriously. Alpha has plenty of problems, but Alia and Sharvari’s screen presence isn’t one of them. The slow-motion shots, though? They’re used in every film at this point, and it’s exhausting.
The whole movie feels like deja vu because every bit of it feels borrowed — as if the director sat down with a checklist of spy-thriller essentials and worked through it one by one: the mandatory bikini shots, a high-profile cameo, one overly computerised action sequence, and an unlimited supply of masked men willing to get slaughtered at the hands of the film’s lead. And, of course, the mandatory climactic fight, when both sides (Alia and Bobby) decide to drop their firearms in favour of daggers and fists. This also includes a mandatory stylish pose by the lead stars after every fight sequence.
Alpha = One big confusing riddle
The storyline feels less like a spy thriller and more like one of those family riddles from reasoning puzzles. Alia’s character is abducted as a child — no wait, the child is dead — no wait, she was actually abducted and trained as an assassin. Meanwhile, this child has a twin sister who’s been hidden away this whole time and now joins forces against the man who abducted her. That man is a jilted Indian Army officer whose deadly mission was shelved by the government — except no, he’s not Indian Army at all, he’s a Pakistani spy who’s been embedded in the Indian Armed Forces for years, and somehow no one noticed.
And the person who worked closely with this Pakistani spy for years? None other than the RAW chief, who apparently had no idea he was working alongside an enemy agent the whole time. Makes you miss Family Man.
The urge to enunciate
You can tell a film has zero confidence in its audience when the characters have to announce their every intention out loud. At one point, Bobby Deol’s character gives us the dictionary definition of “alpha.” And when the Pakistani spies want to attack Indian Army soldiers, they actually say it out loud: “Inn Hindustani fauji ko tank se marenge” (We’ll take them out with a tank.) while the audience can see them getting inside a war tank.
Why Alpha misses the X-Factor
While the film sees Alia and Sharvari born with a special serum that gives them X-Men-like superpowers — they can hear enemy footsteps, even breathing, from kilometres away — Alpha itself lacks the X-factor it desperately needs to stand out.
This fixed template is what puts audiences off. Previous spy thrillers each had something unique about them: War had the teacher-disciple dynamic between Hrithik and Tiger; Ek Tha Tiger had Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif’s onscreen pairing, fun comedic elements, and a globe-trotting spy-action thriller with Katrina wining hearts performing high-end stunts herself; Pathaan had Shah Rukh Khan’s stardom and emotional appeal, not to mention it also marked SRK’s comeback to screen after 4 year hiatus and that became a huge attraction for his fans.
But what is the USP of Alpha? The makers could have explored Alia and Sharvari’s sister characters more deeply and developed the emotional depth the film sorely lacks. At one point in the climax, Sharvari and Anil conveniently leave the frame entirely to let Alia have her moment and fight Bobby alone. The audience can easily hear the writer’s thoughts at this point. In the end, Alpha doesn’t give you anything to remember it by — it’s forgotten the moment you exit the theatre.
The trial room effect
Though Alpha and Dhurandhar are films from different universes, releasing a spy thriller in the age of Dhurandhar is risky business for everyone. What audiences miss after watching Alpha is the relatability and connection to the characters. The film’s storyline — written by Uday Chopra, Ishita Moitra, and Shridhar Raghavan — follows a set template, which is why Alia’s performance feels like a mash-up of every actioner we’ve already seen.
This also brought to mind Anurag Kashyap’s words about Yash Raj Films. In 2022, he told Galatta Plus, “Here cinema is largely controlled by those people, and that too second generation, that has grown up in trial rooms. They have not lived life. So their referencing is based on cinema. What is not on screen can’t be cinema to them. The biggest problem with YRF is the trial room effect. You take a story, and you want to make a Pirates of the Caribbean out of it, and it becomes Thugs of Hindostan. You take a story, and you want to make a Mad Max: Fury Road out of it, and it becomes Shamshera. The moment you head in that direction, you’re cheating yourself, especially in today’s time.”
That, in the end, is Alpha’s real problem. It isn’t that Alia Bhatt can’t carry an action film — she clearly can. The problem is that Alpha never discovers its own identity and hence feels more assembled than authored.