Alpha '26

Man, 3.1/10 on IDMB for this? That's, like, *¼ on the four-star scale, And while I know I'm perhaps overly reluctant to get below two stars unless there's either something so shoddy that it looks amateurish about a movie or it's entirely wrong-headed (on top of just skipping that which looks unappealing), that seems pretty harsh for a movie that's loud and dumb but not actually inept.

It's kind of funny, for all that you hear a lot of discourse about how American fandom often has no distance between "sux!" and "rools!", just looking at the ratings on foreign films (especially East or South Asian) from their native audiences often reveals trends that seem even more extreme, although often more eloquently stated, just a lot of star rankings pegged at either end. If the aggregate winds up in the middle, it's because that's the average, not the median or mode.

That seems kind of harsh in this case; it's a messy but not painful movie. Still, it's kind of nice to see that it's not just us sometimes, even if that includes "slagging on the female-led entries in a series much more than they deserve."


Alpha '26

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2026 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)

Has the YRF Spy Universe been experiencing diminishing returns since it officially became a thing with Pathaan, the way American cinematic universes have since the pandemic? There's no mid-credit scene at the end of Alpha to indicate that the next entry is already in the works, the inevitable crossover scene is a bit less intrusive than usual, and the whole thing is slightly less slick, like Yash Raj Films is a bit less all-in on the whole project. It's not bad, but if the franchise does sputter out, folks will probably see this as where it started.

It opens in 1999, the day after the Kagal War with Pakistan, with future RAW chief Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor) and comrade Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol) the only survivors of their unit, with Fateh spearheading the Alpha super-soldier project. Alpha serum proves fatal, not just to soldiers, but to Kaul's wife Janaki (Dia Mizra), to whom he'd administered it so she could survive a difficult pregnancy. She dies in childbirth, and Kaul believes his daughter has too, but Fateh has kidnapped the child and raised her to be an assassin, Sita (Alia Bhatt). In 2026, she snaps, killing everyone involved with Project Alpha, intending to save Fateh and Kaul for last - but what neither she nor Fateh realizes is that she has a twin, Durga (Sharvari), who Vikrant's brother has been raising in Spain and who also has Alpha serum flowing in her veins, though.

There's a fair amount of gas in here, especially the first half, which doesn't exactly take forever to get to adult Sita but does have enough steps along the way that you can feel the convolutions and wish for the filmmakers to just get on with (although, to their credit, things do move quickly enough that I didn't wonder about the obstetrician who apparently believed Sita was stillborn but alert enough to spirit Durga away until after the movie). Enough goes on that things never get truly drab, but it's carefully constructed enough that when the movie hits the interval, the inevitable redirection feels less like a twist than the movie finally becoming the picture it was always going to be.

Director Shiv Rawail and a brace of writers eventually get things moving through action, which is pretty decent, for the most part; Alia Bhatt especially seems fairly athletic and willing to throw herself around and mix it up with bigger opponents, and her clean moves are a neat contrast with Sharvari, whose Durga is fit and enhanced but has clearly used her gifts for skateboarding and soccer more than fighting while Sita has been honed into a weapon. A lot of the action is sort of typical of big Indian movies, for better or worse - Rawail and the action team use a lot of speed-changes, quick pans, and wire-fu to make a fight feel like one long move, although savvy action fans recognize the tricks by now. It's still often fun mayhem; the big fight immediately after the interval is a blend of clockwork antics and automatic weapons that feels like gleeful, unembarrassed spy-fi and while sometimes the action isn't as clear as it could be, there's glee in big explosions without being completely sadistic.

The cast, by and large, seems to understand the job of trying to entertain the audience. Bhatt, who most Western viewers will probably know best from RRR, in particular is kind of a weird delight as a wry, hard-edged antihero, the sort of cocky and eccentric badass that guys get to play in Indian action pics a lot more than women; Sharvari plays a romantic comedy character who just happens to have superpowers and it's a bit of a shame the filmmakers couldn't build more comedy out of Durga rubbing off on Sita than just having the former toughen up as the movie goes on. Anil Kapoor is thoroughly reliable as Vikrat (though, admittedly, I'm a sucker for the silver-templed pencil pusher getting to actually prove cool), while Bobby Deol gets the part that seems kind of dumb and one-note until the film stops trying to be mysterious or ambiguous and takes the chains off to let him go nuts as a villain.

The Alia Bhatt/Sharvari sister act is potentially the most entertaining part of Alpha, and I'm kind of glad that the filmmakers got right to it rather than using it as the hook for Beta or some other sequel that may never come. Mostly, it's a familiar big-budget action flick that clicks a lot of boxes - plenty of action, mid-movie twist, two dance numbers, a digital look that starts to look a little too fake when there's a lot going on, and a sudden shift from a sort of nebulous enemy to clear nationalism - and makes the wise decision to start breaking things whenever it gets a bit too slow. It's kind of middle-of-the-pack, as far as these Spy Universe movies go, but it's not out of the question I'll look back on it fondly if Sita and/or Durga show up in another one.