‘Alpha’ (2026) Movie Review - Shiv Rawail's Spy Thriller Is All Momentum, No Emotion

At least in theory, Shiv Rawail's Alpha sounds like a terrific action thriller melodrama (spoilers ahead). It's about a girl, Sita (played by Kiara Khanna, Khushi Hajare, and Alia Bhatt at different ages), who is separated from her real father, Colonel Vikrant Kaul (Anil Kapoor), at birth by a diehard patriotic soldier named Colonel Fateh Singh Lakhawat (Bobby Deol). Fateh uses Sita as a lab rat for the titular program, which is all about a serum that gives humans superhuman strength. Inject yourself with a dose of the Alpha serum, and you will, among other things, be able to hold your breath for nine minutes underwater and sprint comfortably in temperatures as low as -30°C. But this serum is not yet perfect, and what do you know, Sita is the key to its perfection. How? It doesn't matter. What matters is that Fateh's mad zeal to create an army of supersoldiers results in the separation of a father and daughter, as well as, you find out later, a sister from her sister. On top of that, Alpha is also about Sita confronting betrayal from her father figure (Fateh) as well as a betrayal at the national level.

Considering all the elements here, the reunion that occurs in Kashmir before the interval should have torn the screen apart with its feverish emotions. It's already well established that Bhatt is a fantastic actor, and she is joined by equally terrific performers such as Deol, Sharvari (she soared in Vedaa), and Kapoor. Yet the reunion feels mostly flat and curiously sober. Bhatt still shines with her reactions to certain information, but what should have been explosive looks utterly dull. That's because the movie is not properly shaped for drama; it's shaped for action sequences. Alpha is needlessly complicated by haphazard flashbacks—there are flashbacks within flashbacks—and all they do is vomit exposition without style or verve. Rawail doesn't allow the characters to process their thoughts. There is no room for deliberation, comprehension, or contemplation. Rawail's foot is always on the accelerator, so he rushes through important developments like Sita catching Durga's peppiness, resulting in the softening of her hard shell. What deserves at least an hour-long episode, if not an entire season, happens over the course of a song sequence. And perhaps Alpha would have been better as a web series, as the longer format would have allowed its various dramatic threads to unfold with patience and punch.

Sita, we are told, has a high IQ and is well versed in computer hacking. She is a smart baddie whose mind might surely be an encyclopedia in itself. Rawail, however, doesn't dig into Sita's perspective on everything around her. A woman as intelligent as she is would surely have strong opinions. Sadly, the only opinions she expresses are generic, along the lines of "I am not a sentimental person." Even within the movie's limited scope, Sita's experiences are casually hinted at rather than excavated. She mentions how something deep within her died the moment she started killing people. Alpha, though, never offers a clear contrast between the pre-killer and post-killer Sita. On her eighteenth birthday, she executes a target for the first time. That moment is marked by both heartbreak (she realizes Fateh brought her to a restaurant for a mission) and blood (she carries out the assassination). Yet the only thing evident on screen is Sita's smile, which is asked to do all the work. Did Sita hesitate before pulling the trigger? Was she shocked by the sight of real blood? Did she shiver a little before taking the lives of her targets? If the answer is no, then what's really the difference between the Sita who murdered so many men at the hotel and the Sita who existed before this moment?

What about Durga? She apparently can perform stunts on a skateboard and is also a parkour expert. She is also, based on a few images, a boxing and weightlifting champion. Alpha, though, blanks her out and reduces her skills to their use in fight sequences. If Durga has any friends, Rawail doesn't introduce us to them. She might as well have come to life the moment the camera started recording her. The only place where Rawail and Alpha seem comfortable is during the action scenes, which are slick and smooth but also workmanlike and just good enough. Rawail doesn't exactly revel in the pleasure of filming violence. He sees it as a task that must be efficiently executed, which is why the choreography rarely astonishes. It simply leads you to whisper, "Okay, well done." Still, these fights are far more enjoyable than the rest of the film.

Initially, Alpha contains a fascinating idea involving a soldier like Fateh who bears a demented notion of patriotism. You've heard of mad scientists; Fateh is a mad soldier. He doesn't mind sacrificing the bodies of innocent people to complete his task. He is a monster. Rawail, unfortunately, even ends up diluting the sharp edges of this character by turning him into a Pakistani soldier. This reveal arrives as the final nail in the coffin, rendering Alpha a misfire that undercuts itself. The movie is filled with remarkable implications and ingredients, but the filmmakers are too busy chasing obsolete tropes to make anything fresh or ingenious. Alpha combines family melodrama with a sci-fi concept, and the result is a movie whose distinct parts collide rather than coexist. There are ominous talks about Operation Odyssey in Alpha, and of course, given how dry it is, you pray the projectionist would just start playing Christopher Nolan's upcoming The Odyssey instead. Maybe this is Rawail's way of throwing his arms up in the air and communicating that he's waiting for Nolan's epic to arrive in theaters. He conveys his message obliquely; he might have picked up a few spy-related subtleties while working on Alpha. Hey, at least someone benefited from this film. Rawail should be high-fiving himself.