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.

Pathaan

Just before sitting down for Pathaan, I had the semi-random thought that Deepika Padukone probably should have been in a James Bond movie by now, or Aishwarya Rai ahead of her, but a very little research indicates that somehow, Bond has only been to India on-screen once, in Octopussy, which surprises me a bit, although I suspect that a British secret agent operating in India after it gained independence is something neither the producers nor the Indian government would want to touch with a ten-foot pole, even if Bond's adventures have been more broad, world-threatening material for the past 50 years or so.

Which makes it kind of funny that Pathaan at least mentions some potentially sensitive real-world events to set its story in motion, even though that story will get kind of crazypants reasonably soon.

Related to the crazypants nature of the film: Indian action stars seem to get jacked to a level that looks like it hurts, like the sinew would have to be straining to hold that muscle to the bone without any cushion, and all those blood vessels could just rupture and bleed-out if they rubbed against and abrasive-enough surface. Or at least, that's what I tell myself as I wolf down mozzarella sticks while watching their movies.

Pathaan

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 February 2023 in AMC Boston Common #18 (first-run, DCP)

It's hard not to think of James Bond when watching Pathaan, especially if you're an English speaker; filmmaker Siddarth Anand and Shah Rukh Khan have created a shaggier sort of super-spy than 007, but the basics are still there: Everyone in the game recognizes the "secret agent" who has a tight working relationship with the boss, follows a trail that leads around the world to various action spectacles which culminate in an assault on a secret lair. Consciously or not, it's something that works, especially when amped up to big Bollywood scale.

This one opens on 5 August 2019, when the news that India has made aggressive moves in Kashmir inspires Pakistani general Qadir (Manish Wadhwa), who has just been given a cancer diagnosis, to set a plan that he should just be able to finish in motion, with the help of freelance terrorist "Jim" (John Abraham). In the present, top-secret agency JOCR (Joint Operations & Covert Research) is following a trail to former Pakistani agent Rubina "Rubia" Mohsin (Deepika Padukone), who crossed paths with India's "Pathaan" (Khan) and Jim two years ago, hoping she'll lead them to something code-named "Roktbeej", which certainly sounds like a weapon of mass destruction.

Anand and his collaborators are looking to solidify a franchise here, so they've got a fair amount to put in order - an "Outfit" which can tie future parts together, a secret agency that Pathaan and its director (Dimple Kapadia) started to include agents who work best outside the regular bureaucracy, backstories that won't have to be suddenly discovered for sequels. They do it better than many - compare to how hard several of the same actors had to work to launch the "Astraverse" with Brahmastra Part One: Shiva - in part because they're not trying to create who fantasy worlds with rules to follow and in part because the two-act structure of Indian movies means that more or less the entire first half before the interval can be an extended flashback before returning to the present without it seeming structurally weird. Heck, you barely notice that they're a second level deep in reminiscences at a couple points! The filmmakers make this a big story with a number of missions that lead to a climax, but they leave themselves in a good place to pick up running later.

In the meantime, though, it's a big fun movie that moves quickly from one fun scene to another. Folks making western spy movies will probably see how the traditional sequence of introducing the leading lady, having the hero tail her and eventually insinuate himself into her company right up to a plot twist is streamlined here by making it a big, energetic musical number; it elevates the sort of spycraft that, say, James Bond always looks awkward doing into the same popcorn entertainment as the rest of the film. The music is hardly subtle for the rest of the movie, either, helping Anand and the rest keep the film high-energy even as it's crossing over from bombast to drama, keeping it bigger than life without actually being exhausting.

That goes double for the action, which is big and sometimes gloriously absurd, right from the point where the filmmakers make unusual use of a helicopter in the opening gambit. Anand clearly enjoys the chance to dangle people from aircraft, doing it three times (on three continents!) in the first act, but he uses the space necessary and the large-format photography well, and then spends the second act on some wonderfully insane bits of business in the second half. I legit cackled when a pretty good train fight took a big, impossible turn (shot and cut in the sort of manner that one recognizes it as ridiculous but decides to roll with it) and when a character has some ideal but unlikely equipment later on. The closer-quarters material in the middle of all that is pretty good as well: It's a bit tight and quick-cut, the sort of thing that can raise your antennae about how they could do that less, but the principals and their stunt performers are doing good work nonetheless.

Those stars are a good group as well. A post-credit stinger plays on how Khan is maybe getting a little old for this, even if he is in absurdly muscular shape, but he's got a nice energy here; Pathan is focused and passionate about doing the job well, but he's enough of a veteran as to be comfortable with what he's capable of. John Abraham goes the other way, making a meal of every maniacal, angry line given to Jim and having a blast as the villain who isn't a hero in his own mind but certainly thinks that everything he's trying to take is his due. Deepika Padukone and Khan seem to have a good time playing off each other - they know the kind of chemistry they need and there's a bit of an acknowledgment of the age gap when Pathaan is kind of flustered at Rubia turning her sex appeal on him - and Padukone is entertainingly brash here, never the sidekick or just the romantic interest.

Indeed, by the time the film is over, one recalls how the logos in the opening branded this as part of the "YRF Spy Universe", with one supporting character certainly worth adding to the mix along with Pathaan, Tiger, and Kabir. I'll welcome more (and will probably catch up on the rest on Prime); this may play a lot like some of the sillier eras of James Bond, but it's got the means to go big with that and make it entertaining.