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‘Alpha’ is just your average ‘Boy and His Pet’ tale, but now the pet is a dog, and the story is set some twenty thousand years into the past. This is sold as a movie depicting the ‘origins of man’s best friend,’ but to me, it is more of an advertisement to purchase a wolf for kids as a form of manipulation. After watching “Alpha”, they would indeed want one. In reality, the filmmakers should have just slapped the title ‘PUH-PEEEEEE!!!’ on it. Because, judging from the oohing and aahing from the audience at my IMAX 3D screening, it is clear that people were too eager to throw their own warm and fuzzy pet-owner feelings onto a wild beast that would devour them without a second’s thought.
Let us now engaged in the game that life has presented us with. Keda (Kodi Smit-McPhee) Is first shown bison hunting with his tribe. He is the son of Tau (Jóhannes Haukur Jóhannesson), the ‘alpha’ of his people. Keda is expected to do great things, however, he is a soft-hearted boy and has qualms about killing the animals. In response to his son failing to finish a wounded animal off, his father yells, “A life is for the strong! You must earn it!” Towards the end of the hunt — which is only one of the many intricately crafted and artistically stunning set pieces — Keda’s hesitation results in him being outsmarted by his prey, and his defeat causes him to fall over a high brouge.
When Keda plummets, “Alpha” cuts to a week earlier. You might believe that Keda’s fall is the story’s peak, but it is actually the inciting incident that jumps the story into motion. While advancing through the selected flashback, there is a paint offered where Tau is explaining Keda the alpha wolf, the pack’s leader who commands the other wolves. We learn some of the rituals in this tribe that will later become important shorthand. Director Albert Hughes and his editor, Sandra Granovsky, have made a clever juxtaposition of rapid cuts from the sequences of opening hunting and Keda’s seemingly dangerous fall.
Keda’s cliffside landing point is isolated enough that Tau can’t get to him, so he must grieve for his son before moving on. Indeed, the circumstances Keda is in appear quite grim—trying to climb in either direction is essentially a suicide scheme—but Daniele Sebastian Wiedenhaupt, the screenwriter, makes such a horrible scenario à la mode in an entirely fresh and laughably strange way. This is not the only scene of this type in “Alpha”; there are more closer to the end of the movie that literally put everything on faith and the power of suspension, but to my surprise, there is just enough pacing to stop the audience from thinking too deep into the story or what happens next to the heroes.
In this story, Keda’s unwillingness to kill proves advantageous to the wolf. While attempting to set the horrifying wound that his cliff business left him with, Keda is desperately hunted by wolves who happen to set their eyes on him. After Keda injures the alpha, he is left amongst the dead as allured prey but instead of attacking him he alters values and soothes the wolf to get mended. That’s when Keda names him Alpha. In time, both of them gradually learn to put their faith in each other, or rather flesh out their Alpha instincts within each other. Keda turns into a wolfish version of an Alpha, and Alpha morphs into a canine Rin-Tin-Tin.
Alpha” has an unexpected vintage quality to it. It resembles those Disneynature films, but with sharper visuals, more grit, and no use of English at all. That’s right, Sony is trying to hide the fact that the film is subtitled for some reason, which is incredibly shady – and disrespectful to subtitles. The dialect spoken by Keda and his tribe is fascinating in that it doesn’t consistently make sense with the translation. At one point, there is a character who sounds genuinely inspired, almost eloquently going on for an extended period of time. But the end result is three words on the subtitles. That said, filmmakers deserve some praise for not using English in a scenario where people would have never spoken it.
Everything about Alpha’s IMAX quality images is high level, but its Hughes and his cinematographer Martin Gschlacht, along with the visual effects team, do better. They create a fantastic world that is dangerous and beautiful at the same time. Most often, they capture the characters at the middle of an endless landscape, which aids in capturing this beauty. Moreover, the water is unnaturally blue, the sky is full of stars, and the terrain is harsh and unyielding whether it is covered in brutal ice or sanded desert. The frost busted mouth of Keda trapped under the water during the most brutal scene in the movie is amazing alongside Alpha tracking him above. Watching this sequence is mesmerizing. After the movie leaves theaters, it should be displayed in museums around the world.
Smit-McPhee depicts his role with great nuance, and does not rely on much dialogue. He seems to connect with whatever is portrayed as Alpha. (Is that a real wolf, or is it Memorex, or CGI?) Those over eight years old will enjoy this one, and so will their parents, because “Alpha” is indeed an adventure movie, even though it has a rather smudgy soupçon of sentiment. I suspect dog lovers will appreciate this more than cat people. This is the tale of a beta boy who becomes an alpha wolf, and an alpha wolf who becomes his pet. It’s a delightful story, to be sure. Unless you’re a wolf.
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