ABOUT: The story of Alpha (2026) is a female-led espionage action thriller that introduces a dark origin story fror super-soldiers within the YRF Spy Universe (a personal favourite of the GRM team is PATHAAN, currently streaming on Amazon Prime!).
The narrative begins when rogue Army officer Fateh (Bobby Deol) steals a highly experimental and dangerous regenerative drug known as the “Alpha serum”. This serum was originally proposed to save the lives of soldiers by accelerating healing and enhancing their physical senses. Fateh steals it initially to save his pregnant wife during delivery, but she passes away. He takes the surviving Alpha baby, Sita, and raises her in isolation to be an elite, ruthless assassin.
Reaction: The latest entry in producer Aditya Chopra’s “Spy Universe” actioners is loud and slick and repetitive and kinda boring. The series is running out of steam, sorta like the Marvel universe films. This one features Anil Kapoor (familiar to Western audiences for his role as the game show host in Slumdog Millionaire). He plays an Indian army officer who injects his pregnant wife with a secret serum designed to create super soldiers. The wife dies, but the daughter becomes a super fighter. She is played by Alia Bhatt, a good choice for the role, as she is the rare Bollywood starlet who has always been more of a bratty gamine than a statuesque glamour-puss in her screen persona. Unfortunately the film around her just seems endless and familiar, despite some location shooting in Spain and more emphasis on hand-to-hand combat than wire-work stunts. Blue-eyed Hrithik Roshan makes a cameo appearance, but the dark visual palette and the constant explosions and violence undercut the novelty of having two females leading the action sequences (Bhatt’s character has a sister who also hates Pakistani spies). The glam musical number over the final credits reduces both of them to the usual eye candy role demanded of most females in Indian movies. Too bad, cause they kicked ass up to that point as convincingly as some of the aging stars like Salman Khan did in earlier entries in the series. But not enough to save this tired formula movie.
Rating: 4 out of 10
