The YRF Spy Universe has produced a couple of my favourite films ever in War and (in particular) the criminally unsuccessful War 2 (my favourite film of last year!) but it is, let’s say… patchy. I mean… several of the films star a very bad man–just look at his absurdly long controversies entry on Wikipedia–but I’ve been willing to give the franchise the benefit of the doubt because I’m such a sucker for Hrithik Roshan’s beautiful eyes.
Christ you could drown in them.
For a shared universe that only decided it was one three film in, Alpha–unfortunately–has taken the wrong lessons from the already burst Marvel/DC bubble and decided what the franchise needs is films that are exposition-stuffed origin stories that feel more like set-up for future cameos than they are, you know, enjoyable movies in their own right.
This is a real “when are they going to get to the fireworks factory?” of a film, and it’s one that constantly teases a fireworks factory before just… not showing you it. I’m not sure if it was the first time feature director Shiv Rawail1 just not being up to the job–the film was postponed for reshoots, apparently–but if you compare the film to War 2: that movie opens with an action sequence that would be the climax in any other movie, and Alpha opens by introducing a bad-ass group of super-soldiers who… take part in a training exercise where they don’t do anything cool, that we mostly watch from a board room.
Because really we’re only here to learn all about the R&AW chief’s struggle to have a child.
My favourite example of this–if you’ll allow me to skip ahead a bit–is that before the intermission, we see our heroes, seemingly trapped in an impossible situation, all primed to kick ass. “Finally,” you think, “we’re going to get a truly balls to the wall action sequence.”
When the film returns from intermission the two action stars are told by their dad to run away, which they proceed to do. They tee us up, make us anticipate, and then nothing cool happens.
(Our heroes literally spend most of the movie on a fun bonding road trip to a safehouse.)
There’s a real sense that they just didn’t have any idea what to do with this film. My suspicion is that this exists because someone noticed that maybe the War sub-series is just a teensy bit homoerotic and said “we gotta get some hot ladies up in this.”
It was decided, of course, that ladies are weak and meek, so they need to have a reason why they could be the equal of any man (super serum) but even then the film just doesn’t really do anything with our stars. I like Alia Bhatt, but it seems like they kind of shrugged and went, “I dunno… kind of make her look like Letty from Fast & Furious” and that was about as many ideas as they had. If you need an idea of how badly served Bhatt and her co-star Sharvari are, the film’s big cameo is (spoiler?) Hrithik Roshan, and he is already cooler than them sitting still and doing nothing. When he actually gets up to fight, he does three cool things immediately that are more awesome than anything Bhatt, the ostensible star of this film does at any point. And he’s just supposed to be a normal guy!!!
If there’s an elephant in this room, though, it’s that the YRF Spy Universe already does have a kick-ass female protagonist, Katrina Khaif’s Zoya from the Tiger movies, but she’s from Pakistan, and Alpha absolutely represents Indian cinema’s increasingly histrionic nationalism. Long gone are any calls for mutual understanding, and there’s a sense that even “there are some good ones” is beyond the pale. This isn’t the worst example of it I’ve seen in a while (Fighter, *shudder*) but it absolutely casts a pallor over the climax.
Not that the climax is that great anyway. I mean… it’s fine, I suppose. By the time you get to it, the movie has led you to not expect much, and when it doesn’t give you very much, it doesn’t really feel that worth complaining about.
A flop and a let down, then, and I’d think it’d likely be a nail in the coffin for this stumbling franchise but I suspect they’ll push through on a future Paathan movie. Indian men in their [checks notes] 60s are allowed to do cool stuff on screen so that one will probably work. Lord knows I’ll show up for it.
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- A long time assistant director, has done a TV show, and a nepo baby, but the last one is basically a prerequisite for being in Indian cinema, so it’s not like we can hold that against him any more than usual. ↩︎