Review: Alpha

Alpha (2D)
Cert: 12A / 96 mins / Dir. Albert Hughes / Trailer



Well, if there's one good thing to come out of Albert Hughes' boy-meets-dog adventure Alpha, it's that we've finally unlocked the secret to preventing Sony from cramming their movies with retail-product placement. Okay, that secret involves setting the story approximately 20,000 years in the past, but if that's what it takes...

Anyway. Imagine the digitally enhanced filmscape of Life of Pi but with minimal dialogue and any sense of broader metaphor stripped away, and you'll get a good idea of what Alpha feels like. Separated from his ice-age tribe, young Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) has to journey home across the tundra, befriending an injured wolf along the way, which turns out to be the beginning of mankind's relationship with dogs*¹. It's not quite as sentimental as one might imagine, but it's not quite as satisfying either.

Credit where it's due, there's some stunning scenery on display here. But the film's visual excesses play their hand early on, after which the audience is never sure whether they're appreciating the work of the cinematographer or the visual effects teams. There's no reason why these can't work hand-in-hand of course, but sections of Alpha are so heavily CGId that you'd wonder why they didn't just save time by animating the movie in its entirety.

Similarly, Kodi Smit-McPhee doesn't feel quite right in the leading role as the tribal chieftan's callow son. He puts in a good turn and is naturally suited to the characteristics, but it's like the part itself hasn't been finalised on the page, so he'll never be able to nail it. Again, a CGI (or better still, anime) story would have skipped straight over this.

But the core of the film is the relationship between Keda and his rescued companion, Alpha. At only 96 minutes including the setup-time, this never really gets deep on an emotional level, and some of the more enhanced shots of our canine friend make it look like a different animal altogether (still a wolf, just a completely different one). But the isolation of the pair at least allows for uninterrupted development, even if the film's convenient invention of pull-toys and the game of fetch feels a little on the nose.

Overall, Alpha is an interesting idea, unevenly executed. It's a shame the film's technical ambitions aren't matched by its narrative ones, and that none of it really holds together as a result. I suspect that both director Hughes and screenwriter Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt had greater ambitions for the project, which got sanded down or lost on the long, arduous journey to the screen…

The last five minutes are good though, because dogs are awesome.

Life of Pi, 47 Ronin.



Not particularly, although it'll look nowhere near as impressive on your TV.



You'll probably only get one watch out of this; stream it.



I'm taking a point off for Morgan Freeman's opening and closing narration.
Completely unnecessary, thoroughly phoned-in and the easiest 15 minutes work he's ever banked a cheque for, the lazy hack.

What's worse, without this, the film would have no real dialogue (the language spoken by the characters was created specifically for the production and is subtitled on-screen), so could be enjoyed by hearing-impaired audiences without the need to wait for a fully-subtitled performance, being effectively 'on the same level' in terms of understanding the speech. This is still the case since Freeman's bookends add literally nothing to the movie, but without it this could have been a marketing tool in the film's favour.



Probably.



Nope.



Level 2: Kodi Smit-McPhee is in this, and he was in that X-Men: Apocalypse with Rose 'Dormé' Byrne and Oscar 'Dameron' Isaac.





*¹ Okay, it was Keda who injured the wolf in the first place, but that's not the point. If they'd framed Alpha as the prehistoric origins of Stockholm Syndrome, it might have been even more difficult to market... ^{[ BACK ]}

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