‘Alpha’: Promising spy-verse, only gets worse

Do you remember the larger-than-life Bollywood of the early 2010s? The gleefully implausible plots, the exorbitant sets in foreign locations built solely to be obliterated, and the theatres erupting into whistles as nameless henchmen were dispatched by the dozen.

Sadly for ‘Alpha’, which is summoned out of that very ethos, the hollering audiences of theatres have dwindled, and people have discovered since that there are better narratives to be told.

The latest addition to the ‘YRF Spy-verse’ joins the ranks of ‘War’, ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ and ‘Pathaan’, while marking the franchise’s first female-led outing with twins Sita (Alia Bhatt) and Durga (Sharvari). You may only realise they’re supposed to be the emotional core because I’ve just told you; the film certainly doesn’t.

Their relationship, personalities and arcs receive so little attention that they are less characters than genetically-modified action figures.

Beginning in the aftermath of the Kargil war, the film gambles everything on a twist so spectacularly obvious it can be smelled from its opening scene — no exaggeration.

RAW chief Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor) and his morally murky mentee Colonel Fateh Singh (Bobby Deol) oversee a covert operation where ‘Alpha’, a serum that grants enhanced hearing, underwater breathing and regenerative abilities, is injected into commandos. Only later do they find out that it also inevitably kills everyone injected with it. Except Vikrant’s twins are born with Alpha coursing through their veins.

Fateh — armed with dodgy ethics and a questionable Haryanvi accent — forcibly takes infant Sita as a lab rat and disappears into the dusty expanse of Rajasthan to start an even more covert version of the very same, now shutdown, operation.

Why he wasn’t court-martialled into oblivion, how the authorities failed to notice a decades-long super-soldier programme, or why twins raised separately — Durga in Spain and Sita by a Haryanvi Colonel — grow up speaking with neither accent, are among the many questions the film waves away.

Logic, time and ethics are secondary here; there are larger-than-life sets waiting to be blown up.

Years later, Sita goes rogue and attempts to hunt down Fateh. She finally comes face to face with the family she never knew. This should be the emotional centrepiece of the film — a daughter wrestling with abandonment, resentment and a lifetime spent knowing only violence.

Instead, she pauses the violent first encounter to... make ramen. Not because she’s unfazed by bloodshed, but so she can crack a joke about loving “desi Chinese”, in a shameless ad plug-in for Ching’s Secret.

Nothing captures modern blockbuster priorities quite like interrupting trauma for branded noodles.

As ‘Alpha’ barrels across postcard-perfect landscapes leaving destruction in its wake, an earnest cast struggles against an astonishingly middling script, clunky dialogue and action scenes that mistake sensory overload for excitement.

The amazing Alia Bhatt initially appears as bewildered by the material as the audience, though she eventually finds conviction by hardening Sita into a wounded, headstrong person. Sharvari is a welcome, if underused, burst of energy, while Kapoor and Deol commit admirably while playing, respectively, perhaps India’s least competent Intelligence chief and a rogue Colonel whose career should’ve ended somewhere around page five.

The film also seems convinced it’s manufacturing next week’s social media trends instead of this week’s movie. Every few minutes arrives another groan-inducing one-liner, or worse, a reworked saying masquerading as one: “One shot, one kill, no luck, all skill”; “Nazar hati, gardan kati”; and the immortal “Once you go Alpha, you never go back”. (Trust me, you do not want to Google what that last one is riffing on.)

That this is the spy universe’s first female-led film only makes the disappointment sharper. Instead of giving its women richer emotional terrain or fresher storytelling, ‘Alpha’s’ idea of empowerment is telling young girls they too can be fearless spies, provided they occasionally pause mid-escape to strip down for a scenic dip, and fight bad guys in uncomfortably tight clothing.

As the women repeatedly find themselves standing around men during what the film believes are its biggest moments — be it Vikrant or Hrithik Roshan’s Kabir in a cameo — the joke writes itself. It is far from funny.

Even the music — once the calling card of this brand of blockbusters — passes by without leaving behind a single memorable note.

The screenplay eventually falls to Bollywood’s latest escape hatch: “When in doubt, blame Pakistan” — a line I can’t believe I’m recycling yet again.

You’ll leave the theatre in shock, though probably not the way the filmmakers intended. I remain convinced these seasoned actors made a far better film somewhere along the way, and ‘Alpha’ is merely the elaborate two-and-a-half-hour spoof they accidentally released instead.